On Mon, 9 Aug 1999, Chris wrote:
> I've just upgraded my SparcStation 5 from
> Solaris to Redhat 6.0, and have a question
> regarding the serial ports. What device
> should I use to address them? For instance
> what device should I link /dev/modem to if
> I want to connect a modem to serial port 1.
i've got an ultra-1 and i'm running an "mgetty" on /dev/ttyS0 and have
/dev/modem symlinked to /dev/ttyS1, and it's working rather well.
i remember /dev/ttyS0 also working with the sparc-10 i was using before i
got the ultra-1.
> My other question is, can I connect a
> parallel port printer to the other serial
> port? I have read elsewhere that the Sparc
> Linux parallel port driver is unmaintained
> at the moment. Does this have any bearing
> on printer support?
er, no. a serial port physically pushes the bits, one after another, out
one pair of wires, while a parallel port sends eight bits down eight wires
at the same time. they're physically not compatible.
i remember seeing serial-to-parallel converters long ago but couldn't tell
you where to find one nowadays. they were boxes that would buffer the
incoming bits and then send eight of them out the parallel port at once,
and they didn't support any kind of bi-directional activity at all. they
were popular back in the days when an extra parallel port for a PC cost in
the $600 range, and these boxes were selling for $150 or so...
this situation (needing to use a parallel printer) calls for using a
little intel box (running linux, of course) as a print server. that's how
i'm doing it for now, but then i'm also sharing the printer with four
machines, one of which dual-boots into winblows-98 so i can test the
programs i write with the microsloth systems...
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| John Simpson, Programmer At Large | http://www.depeche.mode.net/~jms1/ |
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| It all seems so stupid, it makes me want to give up. |
| But why should I give up when it all seems so stupid? |
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