[cups.general] using linux as a rasterizer between an old coco, and a brother HL-2140

[Gene Heskett]

Greetings;

This ought to bring back old memories Mike.  I'm trying to do a

cat /dev/ttyUSB1 | lpr -Plp3

in order to use this linux box as the rasterizer for a Brother HL-2140 printer 
sitting on my coco's desk in the basement.  I have no printers in house today 
that both work and understand ascii.  Daisy wheels, yes, ribbons fresh enough 
to work without instant breakage, no, and a case of ribbons for my old 
brother daisy costs more than the HL-2140!  I'd bet they've been sitting in a 
warehouse in mexico for 15 years, so they are probably just as brittle as the 
ones I broke 3 of monday trying to make it work.

The above isn't working, all I wind up with is an ever growing hash number 
named file in /tmp that contains the coco's output, and no attempt seems to 
have been made to shove it on out the pipe to the printer, which prints the 
cups test page instantly when asked, instantly being maybe 5 seconds, I never 
see a progress report.  When cups refreshes the screen, its done and ready.

Can you suggest something, or am I going to have to cobble up something in 
bash to count line feeds, (I have alf=0a via xmode on the coco) and send that 
block on to a2ps & on to the printer at about line 62 by appending a formfeed 
($0C) at that point?

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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