>>> the sbus printer card also has a bpp on it.  we have a driver for
>>> the bpp, but nothing for the sparcprinter.
>> Arent they standard printer mechanisms or have Sun used something
>> proprietry in there?
> ummm, it appears to basically be some raster type device.

As I understand it, the print engine is basically standard.

What makes it interesting is where Sun put the host/printer split.
Most printers have a rendering engine built into the printer, which
generates the raster for the print engine.  The SPARCprinter uses the
host as the rendering engine; what goes over the cable between the host
and the printer is the raster for the print engine (in some form - I
don't know anything about the signals and such; it may even be
compressed in some wya such as RLE that's easy to uncompress fast).

The problem is, this interface is seriously nonstandard.  Now,
strictly, the interface between the card and the printer doesn't
matter; it's the interface the card presents out its SBus side that
matters.  But that interface too is - AFAIK - undocumented.

Sooner or later someone with more spare time than good sense will sit
down with the Solaris code and reverse-engineer the interface.  Until
that happens, or until someone at Sun gets a sanity flash and decides
to release the interface specs for something nobody uses any longer
anyway, the SPARCprinter will have to remain unsupported.

This is admittedly a bummer.  I've got one. :-(  (No, I didn't pay for
it; it was free.)

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