Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 15:38:44 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Andrew MacIntyre <andymac@bullseye.apana.org.au> Cc: John Utz <utz@serv.net>, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: why is ghostscript so slow now? did i miss a setting? Message-ID: <19980330153844.22515@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.OS2.3.95.980330062114.256A-100000@CENTRAL>; from Andrew MacIntyre on Mon, Mar 30, 1998 at 06:30:48AM %2B1000 References: <19980329163759.20841@freebie.lemis.com> <Pine.OS2.3.95.980330062114.256A-100000@CENTRAL>
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On Mon, 30 March 1998 at 6:30:48 +1000, Andrew MacIntyre wrote: > On Sun, 29 Mar 1998, Greg Lehey wrote: > >>> and it takes an hour to print. lpd sends the head across once every 8 >>> minutes or so on a single pass. this is pretty time consuming. >>> >>> this hardware setup has run with gs for a couple years now, this is sort >>> of surprising. >> >> That's a good piece of information. I suspect you might be running >> into problems with interrupts. If the line printer driver doesn't get >> any interrupts, it transfers about one character per second. That >> sounds like what's happening to you. >> >> Before you go chasing the wrong problem, try this: >> >> # lptcontrol -p >> >> If you're not using /dev/lpt0, use the -u option to describe which >> unit *number* (1 or 2) you are using. See the man page for further >> details. >> >> This will turn the printer port on in polled mode. The result should >> be much faster if the interrupts are the problem. > > I installed Debian 1.3.1 (mu choice of Linux dists when I'm not allowed to > use FreeBSD) on a system at work recently and noticed that the default > lpt0 configuration was polled. Previous installs with much older kernels > had given interrupt driven lpt?s. > > Just makes me wonder whether the incidence of funny parallel port IRQ > handling (port assignments with lpt? in DOS land have always been odd) is > on the increase, possibly in conjunction with a move to PnP IRQ assignment > by motherboard manufacturers (I've heard rumblings about this with serial > ports). In fact, FreeBSD has had polled lpt drivers for a long time. When I first moved to FreeBSD (from BSD/OS, about 3 years ago), I found that I had to run my printer in polled mode, though it worked fine in interrupt mode (the only possibility) under BSD/OS. I haven't got rid of the impression that this was a kludge rather than a hardware problem, but it's been a long while since I've seen a necessity for it. Greg To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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