Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!ENGR!ARTW
From: artw@ENGR.WISC.EDU
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.novell
Subject: Re: Printer & Queue management
Message-ID: <9002011837.AA28067@erb1.engr.wisc.edu>
Date: 1 Feb 90 17:37:37 GMT
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In-Reply-To:  <9002011804.AA27023@erb1.engr.wisc.edu>; from "Ton Roovers" at
              Feb 1, 90 5:02 pm

> could do the trick: let one (dedicated) PC be attached to all servers and
> serve queues on all those servers, redirecting printer jobs to one
> printer connected to that PC. But it seems this doesn't work, since you
> can load only one 'printer driver' per physical port (p.e. LPT1). If you
> try to load a second one, the first one is replaced. Does anybody know if
> other products like Printer Assist have the functionality we are looking for?
> I think Netware should handle this kind of thing.
>
Yes, We've written our own print server that does this.  It could be made
usable for the general public, but it would take some work on our part.

The print server will drive both serial and parallel printers, although
it definitely works best with parrallel.  It reads a configuration file
like the following:

PRINTER=PROPRINTER_XL
TYPE=PARALLEL
QUEUE=CAELAB CLEVER
QUEUE=CAEUSR PRO
PORT=2
BUFFER=512
FORM_FEEDS=2

So the print server knows the printer type (it doesn't do much with this),
and the interface.  It knows the names of queues and servers that they are
on.  Port is the physical port number, Buffer is the number of bytes to be
read at a time.  FORM_FEEDS is the number of form feeds to issue at the
end of the job.

There are some other parameters that can be put in this file (mostly for
moving jobs from queue to queue).  If many of you are interested, we
could make this avaliable.  It works only as a dedicated print server,
so it's not a direct replacement for Printer Assist and the like.  (Printer
Assist is great program, in my opinion).  It would probably take us a couple
of weeks or so to get documentation ready and clean up some of the loose
ends.

Please let me know if you are interested, if I get enough responce we'll
make it avaliable.

Art

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Art Wittmann                                  Phone: (608) 263-1748
Network Manager                               Email: wittmann@engr.wisc.edu
Computer Aided Engineering Center                or: wittmann@cae.wisc.edu
University of Wisconsin, Madison