bionic (4) lpt.4freebsd.gz

NAME

     lpt — generic printer device driver

SYNOPSIS

     device ppc
     device ppbus
     device lpt

DESCRIPTION

     The current lpt driver is the port of the original lpt driver to the ppbus(4) system.

     One purpose of this port was to allow parallel port sharing with other parallel devices.  Secondly,
     inb()/outb() calls have been replaced by ppbus function calls.  lpt is now arch-independent thanks to the
     ppbus interface.  See ppbus(4) for more info about the ppbus system.

     The parallel port bus is allocated by lpt when the printer device is opened and released only when the
     transfer is completed: either when the device is closed or when the entire buffer is sent in interrupt
     driven mode.

     The driver can be configured to be either interrupt-driven, or to poll the printer.  Ports that are
     configured to be interrupt-driven can be switched to polled mode by using the lptcontrol(8) command.

     Depending on your hardware, extended capabilities may be configured with the lptcontrol(8) command.  With
     an ECP/ISA port, you can take advantage of FIFO and DMA.

     In order to retrieve printer info from /dev/lpt0, just apply the cat command to the device.  If the printer
     supports IEEE1284 nibble mode and has data to send to the host, you will get it.

FILES

     /dev/lpt0                         first parallel port driver

SEE ALSO

     ppbus(4), ppc(4), lptcontrol(8)

HISTORY

     This driver replaces the functionality of the lpa driver, which is now defunct.

BUGS

     There are lots of them, especially in cheap parallel port implementations.

     It is only possible to open a lpt port when a printer is connected and on-line, making it impossible to run
     lptcontrol(8) when there is no printer connected.

     This driver could still stand a rewrite.