[ltp] Thinkpad 600x and printing?

[linux-thinkpad@www.bm-soft.com]

On Sat, 1 Sep 2001, Markus Alt wrote:

> Boyan wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > first attempt to get the printer working failed (in win98 works). Printer
> > for this printer model. However the print fails. Yast2 complains that:
> >
> > "I have not fount any parallel devices (/dev/lp?)! It seems that your
> > parallel port is not properly configured."
> >
> > I thought it was for it is enabled in bios in win98 and works there. For
>
> By default, SuSE creates the following line in /etc/modules.conf:
>
>   options parport_pc io=0x378 irq=none,none
>
> By default, your 600X uses I/O address 0x3bc for the parallel port.
>
> To fix this mismatch, you could either change the entry in
> /etc/modules.conf or assign a different I/O address to the parallel port
> using PS2.EXE, ThinkPad Utilities or tpctl. (Although in the latter case

basically no luck up to now. Not that I did not try to get it print but
here is the story. Yesterday and today I managed to try all possible
combinations of configurations in modules.configure and the win98 bios
utilities.The bios are a convenient way to change seetings since they
offer preconfigured memory allocations for the LTP1. Tried all of those
basic configurations 0000 to 0004 (278,378,3BC) together with a respective
change in the modules.conf line and still won't print. Simply no parallel
port detected nor by yast nor by kernel.

Was almost giving up and took a look in /var/log/messages that became
quite long in the meantime and see some hope. On two (out of numerous
reboots) occasions the kernel seems to have detected the parallel port
(only in the 0x3BC case ) giving some encouraging signals, though
won't configure and print. Here is an excerpt:

Sep  2 16:29:18 newbie kernel: unloading PCMCIA Card Services
Sep  2 16:29:18 newbie kernel: hda: DMA disabled
Sep  2 16:29:18 newbie kernel: md: recovery thread got woken up ...
Sep  2 16:29:18 newbie kernel: md: recovery thread finished ...
Sep  2 16:29:18 newbie kernel: mdrecoveryd(8) flushing signals.

Sep 2 16:29:18 newbie kernel: parport 0x3bc (WARNING): CTR: wrote 0x0c,
read 0xff

Sep 2 16:29:18 newbie kernel: parport 0x3bc (WARNING): DATA: wrote 0xaa,
read 0xff dr 00:E0:98:8E:81:23

Sep 2 16:29:18 newbie kernel: parport 0x3bc: You gave this address, but
there is probably no parallel port there!

Sep  2 16:29:18 newbie kernel: parport0: PC-style at 0x3bc [PCSPP(,...)]
Sep  2 16:29:18 newbie kernel: lp0: using parport0 (polling).
Sep  2 16:29:18 newbie kernel: usb.c: registered new driver usblp
Sep  2 16:29:18 newbie kernel: parport 0x3bc (WARNING): CTR: wrote 0x0c, read 0xff

Sep 2 16:29:18 newbie kernel: parport 0x3bc (WARNING): DATA: wrote 0xaa,
read 0xff

Sep 2 16:29:18 newbie kernel: parport 0x3bc: You gave this address, but
there is probably no parallel port there!

Sep  2 16:29:18 newbie kernel: parport0: PC-style at 0x3bc [PCSPP(,...)]
Sep  2 16:29:18 newbie kernel: lp0: using parport0 (polling).
Sep  2 16:29:18 newbie kernel: Linux PCMCIA Card Services 3.1.22

Sep  2 21:13:34 newbie kernel: usb.c: registered new driver usblp
Sep  2 21:13:34 newbie kernel: parport0: PC-style at 0x3bc [PCSPP(,...)]
Sep  2 21:13:34 newbie kernel: lp0: using parport0 (polling).
Sep  2 21:15:22 newbie kernel: parport0: PC-style at 0x3bc [PCSPP(,...)]
Sep  2 21:15:23 newbie kernel: lp0: using parport0 (polling).
Sep  2 21:15:49 newbie init: Switching to runlevel: 6
Sep  2 21:15:54 newbie usbmgr[3147]: bye!


In 70% of the instances where I allocated a place different from 3bc to
the parallel port I had no mouse, but that was a minor concern. These
lines with "kernel:parport..." appeared only twice out of the 50 reboots.
For example now they do not come up although the configuration is
unchanged from the one on Sep 2 21:15:54 above. Very weird. Some clues,
ideas? Thanks in advance.

Boyan.


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