piping text to an ieee-1284 / centronics parallel port

Question

piping text to an ieee-1284 / centronics parallel port

I want to send raw text to a parallel port (IEEE-1284) via a USB-parallel converter. I plug the converter in and the Mac recognizes it natively; it shows up in the list of printers in the System Profiler. How would I pipe text to the thing? With a serial device, it's easy, sending the text to the appropriate device in /dev/tty.*

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

-Michael

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Apr 6, 2009 8:57 PM

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Answer 1

orangekay

Level 5

4,085 points

Apr 6, 2009 11:24 PM in response to Central Harlem Anonymous

That really depends on what driver loads for it and what services it publishes. If there aren't any then you'll have to go through IOKit. If there's some sort of BSD user client then you should be able to go through something in /dev.

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Answer 2

Apr 7, 2009 6:49 AM in response to orangekay

The IEEE-1284 device shows up on the list of printers in OSX. How would I find that services it publishes?

Sorry to ask what are probably very rudimentary questions, but I have never programmed for peripherals before.

Michael

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Answer 3

Apr 7, 2009 12:21 PM in response to Central Harlem Anonymous

Did you try lpr?

man lpr will give you the details.

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Answer 4

Apr 7, 2009 2:03 PM in response to Keith Barkley

You are right that lpr is generally used to print in Unix-world, but as best I can tell, in OSX it can print only to printers known to (and properly configured with CUPS).

In this case, by default CUPS tries to assign a 'generic postscript driver,' which fails, and offers only a small menu of (as best I can tell entirely unrelated) device drivers.

Once upon a time, parallel ports shows up as devices, and parallel printers were easy to talk to. Why is this so hard now?

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Answer 5

orangekay

Level 5

4,085 points

Apr 7, 2009 2:39 PM in response to Central Harlem Anonymous

Central Harlem Anonymous wrote:

Once upon a time, parallel ports shows up as devices, and parallel printers were easy to talk to. Why is this so hard now?

I can't recall the last time I saw an Apple product that shipped with a parallel port, but I imagine its hard because there aren't enough people clamoring for 40 year old technology to justify maintaining support for it in modern source bases.

You can find what driver is matching for the device in the IORegistry with the ioreg tool.

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Answer 6

Apr 7, 2009 8:16 PM in response to orangekay

I don't expect Apple to offer a parallel port, but it would nice if an external parallel port, once recognized by the Mac, were to show up as a device in /dev

This works with USB-to-serial converters, so why not USB-to-parallel?

I continue to look for a solution of minimal pain.

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Answer 7

orangekay

Level 5

4,085 points

Apr 8, 2009 12:12 AM in response to Central Harlem Anonymous

Central Harlem Anonymous wrote:
I don't expect Apple to offer a parallel port, but it would nice if an external parallel port, once recognized by the Mac, were to show up as a device in /dev

This works with USB-to-serial converters, so why not USB-to-parallel?

Again, it's the vendor's responsibility to provide drivers for their products if they want them to be used that way. If whatever's loading doesn't provide a BSD user client then you're going to have to write your own.

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Answer 8

Apr 13, 2009 9:53 AM in response to orangekay

Unfortunately, I have never worked on a project of this sort and suspect it is beyond my skills (especially without copious documentation from the cable vendor).

Is there some repository of relevant source code that might provide a starting place?

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Answer 9

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,739 points

Apr 13, 2009 5:47 PM in response to Central Harlem Anonymous

I take it your printer is recognized as a CUPS device. What's wrong with

echo foo | lp -d thePrinter

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Answer 10

nasif

Level 1

0 points

Apr 14, 2009 1:32 AM in response to Central Harlem Anonymous

first u have to get all the terminal devices mounted to ur mac, then you can use lpr to that device from the terminal

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Answer 11

Apr 14, 2009 8:00 AM in response to Linc Davis

It's a character-based printer and it would therefore be a huge amount of work to make it CUPS-compatible. To the best of my knowledge, there are no daisy wheel printers or their equivalents among the printers supported by CUPS.

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Answer 12

Apr 14, 2009 9:21 AM in response to Central Harlem Anonymous

What is the make and model of this printer?

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Answer 13

Apr 15, 2009 8:10 PM in response to Nils C. Anderson

I'm testing on an Epson DX-10, but the answer will be the same for any daisywheel printer with a Centronics parallel port and the Diablo 630 command set.

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