Very Computer

Hi folks,

I would like to use my laptop (running linux, of course) to print to my Apple
StyleWriter II.  I've looked in the Printing and Serial HOWTO's, but can't
seem to make any headway.

I have a cable that seems to work -- at least, I can communicate with my
Macintosh using it between the laptop's and the Mac's serial ports (though
it's an ugly beastie, consisting of a PC modem cable, a gender changer, a null
modem, and a Mac modem cable all hooked together).  I have tried using
GhostScript, with the device bj200.  When I do something like:
        gs -sDEVICE=bj200 -sOutputFile=/dev/ttyS0 foo.ps
GhostScript chugs away for a while, then says it has done a showpage and
requests a return.  The printer, meanwhile, has done a good imitation of a
rock.  I've tried permutations of this (using /dev/mouse, e.g., and making gs
produce a file and cat'ing it to the serial port directly), but no luck.

What am I missing?  Has anyone had any luck with this?  

Thanks a lot.
        --Roy

--
Roy M. Turner
Department of Computer Science
Kingsbury Hall, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824

Phone: (603)862-2980           FAX: (603)862-3493

Quote:

>Hi folks,

>I would like to use my laptop (running linux, of course) to print to my Apple
>StyleWriter II.  I've looked in the Printing and Serial HOWTO's, but can't
>seem to make any headway.

cat file > /dev/ttyS0

Well, I couldn't get ghostscript to work, so I called HP tech support.
They told me two things:

(1) The HP Deskwriter has an RS-422 interface, and according to the manual,
    cannot be hooked to an RS-232 interface (the ones on PC's).  I thought
    that I could fool the differential RS-422 side, but I guess I was
    only sometimes lucky.  Well, I figured with 4 IC's, I could build the
    proper converter.
(2) The more serious problem they said is that the HP Deskwriter has some
    sort of quicktime engine inside which makes it specific for the Mac.  
    And unfortunately, I do not believe that ghostview can dump for this
    kind of format.  They told me that had I bought a Desk Jet for the PC,
    a third party manufacturer makes a cable to connect that to a Mac along
    with a Mac driver, but not vice versa for the Desk Writer.

Well, I gave up.

It may be the case that you encounter the same problems with the
stylewriter.  If you get it to work, though, I'd love to hear about how
you did it.

                                                        -Henry
--

UC Berkeley Graduate Student                                 Berkeley, CA