On Thu, 16 Mar 2000, Norman Carver wrote:
> Having set up mdk 7.0-2 on my two PCs and having had
> few problems (except for incomplete network setup on one),
> I agreed to help a colleague set it up on his PC.
> Unfortunately, we have had nothing but problems.
>
> We have resolved the same network issue that I had
> (this is obviously a bug in the installation).
> X is running after a fashion--though not properly,
> since the install did not work with his ATI rage
> pro turbo card for some unknown reason. We can
> probably get that fixed up too, though.
>
> However, we are now having a rather strange problem
> trying to get printing working. He has an Epson stylus
> 900 with usb and parallel port connections, which he has
> been using through the usb connection to Win98. We decided
> to switch to the parallel connection for Linux. We used
> the drakconf/printtool to set up the queue and printed a
> test page successfully. Then he rebooted to Win98 and it
> installed the printer again via the parallel port and printed
> to it successfully. Back to Linux, but now no response to
> an lpr command or to a redirection to /dev/lp0 (the parallel
> port being used). Huh? It is like the Win98 printer install
> did something (although it may just be a coincidence).
>
> Reran drakconf, says that it detects an Epson 900 on /dev/lp0,
> but still no luck with printing or redirection.
>
> Here's some of the info we have found:
> BIOS shows parallel port being set up at 0x378, with irq 7.
> That is what W98 shows for port.
>
> Rebooting into Linux, lsmod shows the lp, parport, parport_pc,
> and parport_probe modules being loaded. dmesg shows the results
> from the probe as detecting a Epson 900 on correct port and address.
> Still no luck printing or redirecting a file. Looking at
> /proc/interrupts does NOT show irq 7 assigned to parport. This
> seems strange except my mdk 7.0 with a local Epson printer (which
> works fine) also does not have irq 7 set.
>
> If we rmmod the lp and parport modules and then load them by hand
> with parport_pc using the io=0x378 and irq=7 options, parport_pc
> causes the printer to make some noises (as it does during BIOS phase).
> Still, though, no printing or redirection.
>
> I am really at a loss. parport_probe shows the right printer being
> detected and because parport_pc elicits some noise from the printer
> the port is clearly right. Why won't anything come out??
>
>
> Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. My friend was really hot
> to switch to Linux, but is about ready to bag it (though he will
> try Caldera first).
>
>
> One more question I have is why the irq for the parport is not
> being set up (e.g., even on my working system) when conf.modules
> contains the lines:
> alias parport_lowlevel parport_pc
> pre-install plip modprobe parport_pc ; echo 7 > /proc/parport/0/irq
>
>
I've seen similar problems with my HP Deskjet 670C. I found it was
related to the bios assigning irq 7 to my SB AWE 64 after booting into
Winsuck then returning to 'drake. Reserving irq 5 in bios to the isa bus
so the sound card would grab it instead of 7 took care of the problem. I
then edited my sound card entry in conf.modules to reflect the change to
irq 5.
--
Rich Clark
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