[KLUG Members] Terminal Attached Printer On SuSe

[Adam Tauno WIlliams]

> > > > I have to put a printer on a Wyse 60 terminal attached to a SuSe 9.1
> > > > box.  But SuSe doesn't offer any mechanism for defining a
> > > > terminal-attached-printer (Wierd, I'm getting warm nostalgic feelings
> > > > for AIX....).  Neither does it seem to include or offer lprint or
> > > > vtprint packages.  Anyone set such a thing up on SuSe (or just recent
> > > > Linux)?
> > > I've used terminal attached printers on X-terminals (network connected),
> > > but you are talking about a serial port connected terminal, right?
> > Yes, a real honest-to-goodness physical Wyse 60. RS-232 BAEBEE!!
> I vaguely remember writing a print driver for a serial terminal a LONG
> time ago (mainframe, not *nix) and it wasn't very hard.  It seems like
> there is just a escape/control code you send in front of the data you
> want to print to redirect the output from the screen to the printer
> port, and another control/escape code to turn off printing at the end.

Yep, that sounds right.  AIX lets you setup these kind of printers just
like any others, you just say which terminal and why kind of printer,
and go.....  Was hoping I was overlooking something that was going to do
this dumb-plumbing for me.

> It wasn't a Wyse terminal either (ANSI compatible), but I doubt it's
> much different on a Wyse.
> I'm scared to ask you just don't plop a Jetdirect down next to the Wyse,
> but I 'm sure you have a good reason.  :-)

You should be scared.  The wyse terminal is 'integrated' with an
industrial battery load tester (think *B*I*G* batteries).  There is some
onboard computer that controls a HUGE power sink that tests the
batteries by draining them as fast as it can and monitoring a whole
bunch of parameters.  This this is all controlled by a Wyse terminal -
with an attached serial printer.  I'm high-jacking the printer AUX
connection to a Cisco access server that when DTR goes high initiates a
reverse streaming telnet to a port on a SuSe box where the data (text)
is captured, converted to postscript, converted to PDF, stored in a
database as a blob and fired via e-mail back to the currently signed-on
load test technician (verses just producing a really bad hard copy). 
I've got a whole test rig of this testup on my workbench (minus the
actual load tester since, ya know, I'm on the second floor and don't
want to end up sitting in the basement), including an actual Wyse 60
terminal.  It even all works, if I manually fire data out the terminals
AUX port, but I want to test that last little bit before I go climbing
around a really filthy, stinky, and dangerous corner of the shop and try
it for real.