Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2001 23:30:15 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Jim Freeze" <jim@freeze.org>, "Mike Porter" <mike.porter@xrxgsn.com> Cc: "John Merryweather Cooper" <jmcoopr@webmail.bmi.net>, "Mike Meyer" <mwm@mired.org>, <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: What is the magical incantation necessary to print to /dev/ulpt0 Message-ID: <003401c123c1$6a0bc0e0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.32.0108122307190.94319-100000@www.stelesys.com>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Jim Freeze >Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2001 8:13 PM >To: Mike Porter >Cc: John Merryweather Cooper; Mike Meyer; questions@FreeBSD.ORG >Subject: Re: What is the magical incantation necessary to print to >/dev/ulpt0 > > >On Sun, 12 Aug 2001, Mike Porter wrote: > >> >> products. I *am* still curious as to the real cost/performance benefit of >> using the host rather than a hardware renderer; it would seem to me that >> there is more data to transfer, and over a relatively slow interface like >> the parallel port, it would seem to me to be terribly expensive from a >> time/CPU time perspective. Of course, my logic could be faulty, or my > >Yes, there is more data to transfer, but USB has helped solve this >problem. But regardless of speed, the consumer looks only at one thing. >$$$. This is only true for retail consumers that are stupid. Most businesses look at reliability first because they understand that saving a few hundred bucks in capital expenditures is piss-poor economy if it increases your service and maintainence costs by thousands over the life of the printer. >It costs money to put hardware in the printer. >And when all (well, from marketing's perspective) your customers already >have a printer running windows, then why not use the computer and make the >printer cheaper. Because if you push the printer intelligence from the printer into the driver, then you decrease reliability because you can have interactions on the host between other software and the driver. case in point - today my father in-law stopped by with a brand, spanking, new HP Omnibook that he had just gotten from a leasing company that his employer is "trying out" He wanted me to set up a Dialup Networking icon so he could log it into an ISP. Well, it took me about 15 minutes to discover that the modem in the computer was screwed up. It was an ESS piece of yit Winmodem that was on the motherboard of the laptop. I got onto HP's website and discovered a "critical" driver update for this laptop - and the update was a brand new modem driver that corrected several problems that basically made the modem not work at all. So I guess I did the leasing company a giant favor because you can imagine the circus that would have followed if a non-technical user like my father in law would have complained to the company that the modem didn't work! (of course only after blowing an hour or two of an ISP's tech support time) The thing that really tore it was that the driver was released last week - and this model of Omnibook had been selling since the beginning of the year. So, for some people they would not have been able to use their modems for 6 months while HP fiddle-faddle-fardled around getting a debugged device driver out. >In the all the current Zxx series, the host driver >performs all the half-toning and shingling of the data. The printers >actually have hardware 'rotater' code that formats the data for the >printhead. In the upcoming release, this 'rotation' will be done in the >host computer. This saves alot of chip real estate since the new printer >has larger more complicated printheads. > This is all great in theory but a nightmare in execution because it just encourages hardware companies like HP to rush a hardware design out the door then spend the next YEAR buggering around with the device driver while all of the customers are in effect beta testers. If the customer has any brains they will buy the printer that has the intelligence in the printer - because then if there is a problem it's obvious, and easily provable, and they have warranty recourse. If, however, the customer has mush for brains then they buy the crap printer that has the fancy device driver - and if there's a problem then they just sit in the middle of a finger-pointing session between the printer manufacturer and the manufacturer of the computer, while each blame the other's crappy hardware. And you ought to note the software license that HP slaps on their printer device driver - the driver software has NO warranty in it whatsover. No wonder companies like HP are doing this - because in effect they are removing the most trouble-prone part of the printer - the imaging software -from consumer warranty protection. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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