Re: Janus; Printing to AppleTalk LaserWriter on MacIvory?

[David Gadbois <gadbois%sygmund.cgs.utexas.edu@RELAY.CS.NET>]

    Date: Tue, 25 Apr 89 13:23 EDT
    From: rjb1%vega%gte.com@RELAY.CS.NET (Richard J Brandau)

    First, Janus:  I recently downloaded this little public-domain Mac
    program from Usenet, and with modest hacking through the wilds of
    SYS:HARDCOPY;LGP2, I was able to get it to turn my Mac SE's serial port
    into a gateway from our Symbolics print spooler to our AppleTalk
    LaserWriter.  I mention this because you might want to do something
    similar, in order to get the use of an extra printer.

I missed the original message in this thread, but it sounds like you've
done something that would be pretty handy here.  I have a Laserwriter
that's shared between an AppleTalk network and a Symbolics.  I have two
lines running to the printer, one a 9600 baud serial line from the
Symbolics (from the console port on a 3620, but that's another story)
and one AppleTalk line.  I have to manually switch between the two lines
on the printer.

Needless to say, the situation is a real pain, especially with the flaky
spooler software and flakier serial port (but, like I said, that's
another story).  If you know of any way to get the machines to share the
printer without a lot of fuss, please clue me in.  I'd be eternally
grateful.

Another thing that worries me is that every time I switch from the
Apples to the Symbolics, the printer manager says:

    MA Top Level: LGP2 Eugene needs improved Adobe error handler.  Downloading...
    MA Top Level: ...finished downloading improved Adobe error handler into LGP2 Eugene

I guess the Apples are silently doing something to the error handler
whenever they use the printer.  I fear (perhaps baselessly) that this
handler might be going into the EEPROM on the Laserwriter, which can
only be erased a limited number of times (like 10,000) before it kicks
the bucket.  Does anyone know how to stop this tug-of-war over the the
error handler from either the Symbolics or the Apple side?

Thanks,
--David Gadbois
University of Texas at Austin Center for Cognitive Science
ARPA/CS/NSFnet: gadbois@sygmund.cgs.utexas.edu
UUCP:{uunet,harvard,ihnp4}!cs.utexas.edu!gadbois