Subject: Re: parallel port ECP
To: Thor Lancelot Simon <>
From: Brian Gregor <>
List: current-users
Date: 08/30/2000 17:59:15
> The problem almost certainly has nothing to do with which parallel port
> mode is in use.  The parallel port interupts are very lightweight and can
> be turned around insanely fast by almost any modern (or even not-very-modern)
> x86 hardware, so plain-old-parallel-port basically *will* exceed the ability
> of your printer to render pages.

Well, even for smaller documents the mouse in X windows gets very 
jerky and the system seems to bog down a little while printing.  This
is a K6-2/500 with 256 meg RAM, IDE disk.  So, I figured the parallel
port mode may have something to do with this behavior...  I'm running
-current 1.4Y, a little old these days but it's quite stable and I 
need it to run 24/7.  I'm considering one of those USB-parallel port
adapters to see if this helps the situation at all.

> What usually speeds things up immensely is to add a bunch of memory to the
> printer.  Then the printer can buffer incoming data in RAM while it images
> pages it's already got.  Most HP printers will happily take the spare RAM
> you've got lying around from old 486 or Pentium machines (that is, 72-pin
> FPM or possibly even EDO SIMMS) -- try it.

This new HP takes EDO DIMMs, but I'm not spending my own money so I'll
buy some more to increase it from 8 meg to see if this helps.