Very Computer

I'm trying to enable printing on a sparc classic (for a friend whom I've
advised to buy a faster machine!).  I'm not an expert but have done this
on several sparcs of my own without difficulty, but am completely stuck
on this one.

The problem appears to be writing to the parallel port.  I'm using gs as
a filter to convert ps to pcl, to drive an HP ljet 4.  Using lp xxx.ps
just prints out lots of banner pages, pretty much ad nauseam.  At least
this indicates that it's possible to get data to the printer over the
parallel link, though.

If I create a .pcl file and cat it to /dev/bpp0 I get the error message
"/dev/bpp0: cannot create" even if I do this as root, yet it works fine
on my U30.  So far as I can see, all the ownerships and permissions are
the same on both machines.  I've printed the .pcl file created on the
classic on the U30 and that's fine, so it's not a file content error.

The print queue seems to be accepting jobs, and even trying to process
them (but only by the endless banner page printing).  

I'm now completely stuck!!  Any advice much appreciated.

Thanks - Paul Douglas

O/S is Solaris 7, btw

Your U30 doesn't have a /dev/bpp0 device file for the parallel port.
It has /dev/ecpp0.  Your commands must be different on the two boxes.
If you typed the same command, that's probably the problem.

  -Greg
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Sorry I wasn't clear enough - I used ecpp0 on U30 and bpp0 on classic;
what I meant by "the same" was (a) that the permissions on eccp0 on U30
were the same as those of bpp0 on classic, and (b) that cat-ing a file
to ecpp0 on U30 printed it, and cat-ing it to bpp0 on classic produced
the "/dev/bpp0: cannot create" error msg.

Paul