Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!chinacat!woody
From: woody@chinacat.Unicom.COM (Woody Baker @ Eagle Signal)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Obscure LaserWriter features
Summary: ADB
Message-ID: <1541@chinacat.Unicom.COM>
Date: 2 Sep 90 05:33:09 GMT
References: <428@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz> <1510@chinacat.Unicom.COM>   <1990Aug31.082117.6829@grian.cps.altadena.ca.us>
Followup-To: comp.lang.postscript
Organization: a guest of Unicom Systems Development, Austin
Lines: 50

In article <1990Aug31.082117.6829@grian.cps.altadena.ca.us>, alex@grian.cps.altadena.ca.us (Alex Pournelle) writes:
> 
> Thanks to the six (including Stephen) people who reported this answer to
> a really obscure one!  And they say USENET isn't valuable....
>

Where did you ever hear that ?????


> 
> Another mentioned that some used ADB to communicate directly with the
> printer; is this actually faster than AppleTalk?


IF so, it certainly should be faster.  The curious thing is, where is
the documentation for the ADB connector, it's pinouts, and what it does.

> 
> I'm still wondering why you can't use SCSI to talk to your LW IINTX; I'm
> also wondering why your font cache can't live on your computer's hard

Not at all.  You can do it with limitations.  I believe Don Lancaster
has done it on a limited basis.  It appears that the major problem
is interfacing to the disk operating system.  It apparently blows
up if you just look cross eyed at it.  Now, it occurs to me, that one
should be able to take a computer with a SCSI interface, and write
a program to make it look like a hard disk to the laser.  Once that is
done, then your font cache should work transparently, and you should also
be able to precompile documents and dump them to the printer over the
scsi port.

Since I have not had a chance to play with a laser with a hard disk, this next
stuff might bee entirely off base, but it seems to me that one could
use rhe   run   operator to execute postscript programs off the hard
disk from within the printer.  If you could then write to the printers
disk from a computer, you could simply use the hard disk as a very large
print buffer, among other things.  This being America, and the free
enterprise system etc etc, I am sure it won't be long before some nifty
little box shows up that hooks to the laser scsi port, and then allows
you to daisy chain as many computers and harddisks as SCSI allows.  There
are several SCSI controller chips on the market.  I'n not a hardware
person, or I probably would have investigated this already.

Cheers
Woody
> -- 
> 		Alex Pournelle, freelance thinker
> 		Also: Workman & Associates, Data recovery for PCs, Macs, others
> 		...elroy!grian!alex; BIX: alex; voice: (818) 791-7979
> 		fax: (818) 794-2297    bbs: 791-1013; 8N1 24/12/3