[HECnet] Printing to an LA75 using VMS queues and form definitions

Mark Wickens mark at wickensonline.co.uk
Tue Mar 8 14:03:17 PST 2011


On 08/03/11 21:49, Gregg Levine wrote:
On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 4:43 PM, Mark Wickens<mark at wickensonline.co.uk>   wrote:
On 08/03/11 21:33, Gregg Levine wrote:
On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 4:27 PM, Mark Wickens<mark at wickensonline.co.uk>
  wrote:
Hi guys,

I have printing working to my LA75+ dot matrix printer via a spooled VMS
queue which communicates via LAT with the printer attached to a DECserver
90L+. Everything is working fine except for two issues:

1. I'd like to be able to print with a form definition which leaves a
margin
at the top and bottom of the page. I tried this:

$ DEFINE/FORM LISTING 3
/WIDTH=132/PAGE=66/MARGIN=(TOP=6,BOTTOM=6)/STOCK=DEFAULT/NOWRAP/TRUNCATE
$ SET QUEUE/DEFAULT=FORM=LISTING LA75$PRINT_ALEPH$

I tried asking Hoff but I think he's sick of my 80's related questions,
his
response was entitled:

Classic printing best left to masochistic perfectionists
<http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/766#comment-2424>
(http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/766)

I think I'm almost there, but the printer appears to be ignoring the
bottom
margin - I get a top margin fine, and the listing is not exhibiting
'rolling' ie the content of the output is aligned correctly on each page.

Anyone got any ideas what I can do? I want to be able to put listings in
vertical binders, and that just doesn't work without both top and bottom
margins being honoured.

Regards, Mark


Hello!
Mark I have several of those terminal servers here. How is yours
configured, and even wired to your system? (or systems?)

-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
Hi Greg,

It is wired to a 10MB router that has both a 10base2 (BNC) connector and
some 10baseT (RJ45) connectors via a thin wire BNC cable connected to
T-pieces with a 50 ohm terminator on each end. The 10MB router is connected
to a Netgear gigabit router via CAT-5 and then out to the rest of the world.

I configured the terminal server by connecting a terminal/pc terminal
emulator to port 1 via a DB9 to RJ45 cable. The management interface allows
you to then specify the name of the decserver and the name of the port, and
whether it is a printer/terminal port, speed, etc.

Once the port was configured I used the decserver/port name in the LAT
configuration on the VAX. I defined a virtual terminal pointing to that
decserver/port then pointed the printer queue to that.

The printer connects at 4800 baud to the specified printer port via a MMJ to
MMJ cable that came with it.

Hope that sheds some light,

Mark.


Hello!
Oh yes. With one of mine I had gotten as far as the configuration
steps. But the connectivity issues were the big one. Do you recall who
makes this "10MB router that has both a 10base2 (BNC) connector and
some 10baseT (RJ45) connectors". I've been trying to find one with
limited success about the time the first one arrived here.

Strangely enough both it, and a VAX Station 3100 arrived here from a
fellow on the original Linux-VAX list. There was one of those in the
list, but that went to a different individual, it might have been you,
then again I can't recall.

That VAX Station 3100 is next to get working, perhaps I'll have the
time to do so, this summer or later.
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."

Greg,

This particular router is a 'no-name' white box. It was actually new when I bought it off ebay, probably about 2 years ago. If you create an ebay search for '(10base2, BNC) router' something will come up (you may need to say 'include description'). I have another one which has more ports, made my Allied Telesis (always a good brand in my experience).

Yes - I think the boxes did go to me. The 90M is invaluable for serving serial consoles out to TCP/IP telnet connections. The 90L+ does a fine job of handling the printer, and doesn't require any configuration for firmware downloading (it also boots within about 10 seconds).

Regards, Mark.



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