RE>>Various ramblings...
>I don't know if this was clear
>from my last message, but I don't have a book on this printer. I'd love to
>find one.

I have a StyleWritter II but the user's manual doesn't  (nor should it)
have a description on it's link layer protocol.  Some of Apple's developper
CDs may have more information but I doubt the whole protocol would
be explained in details.

>(I haven't found a
>way to put the printer into a 'line printer' mode where it just prints
>text, either. That would be really nice for listings and such...)

I believe everything is sent as bit maps and possibly a subset of QuickDraw.

>The serial connection must be at 57600 baud, _no_
>handshaking. (I have watched the Apple drivers specifically turn off
>handshaking, and turning it on doesn't do anything helpful.)

You may be right about the 57k6, but I've heard they actually run the
link in a LocalTalk mode (i.e., 230k sync).  I tend to believe this because
of it's speed (considering the amount of bitmap data which is sent serially).
If they really do this, the protocol can take care of flow-control and there
is no need for hardware handshake.

Steps on to soapbox,

This is one of the reasons I would like to see a minimum system heap
kept around with drivers (print, floppy, video, etc) intact.  This would
help issolate the hardware and we would have more functionality for
peripherals.  For example, some of us now have Ethernet but those of
us with cards based on the Mac Co-processor Platform (or any other chip set)
don't. The MCP cards require A/Rose to be around to communicate with
the card, nobody wants to bother rewriting that.  If the MacOS Ethernet card
drivers were still in place it would work on all cards.

It sounded like the people who wrote the ADB version of the kernel were
somewhat successful in getting a small system heap in place. More work
in that area would probably save tones in trying to decipher harware with
no specs!  The CHRP platform will help this for the CPU but won't help for
peripherals.  And who is going to go out and buy a new CHRP PMac to run
NetBSD?

I guess all of this isn't "pure" BSD so it doesn't interrest the BSD group,
I just wish I had more knowledge of unix and some time so I could do some
work on it.

Finally steps off the soapbox

Anyways good luck with StyleWritter driver,
Cheers

Marc St-Jean  <marc@qcc.sk.ca>
QCC Communications Corporation
114-15 Innovation Blvd.   Tel: 306-249-0220
Saskatoon, SK   S7N 2X8   Fax: 306-249-5128