Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!umd5!uflorida!gatech!udel!princeton!njin!aramis.rutgers.edu!topaz.rutgers.edu!ron
From: ron@topaz.rutgers.edu (Ron Natalie)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Print Server
Message-ID: 
Date: 28 Jun 88 15:46:24 GMT
References: <6770@sigi.Colorado.EDU>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 21

While CISCO sells a parallel printer and software for their terminal
servers, it is possible to hang a printer off a CISCO serial port
(provided it is an RS-232) printer.   We have a number of dumb line
printers and Postscript printers of various sorts that used to run
on RS-232 ports off UNIX machines running on CISCO boxes.  There
are two ways of doing this.  One way is that I have a program that
sits on a PTY and shuffles everything to the remote cisco serial port.
This is handy for places where you won't want to dink with the output
filters.  We do have some minor problems with this on the postscript
printers especially when the printer times out due to long delays in
the host spitting data into it.  We've also hacked the Adobe Transcript
driver to open connections to the device directly.

As far as pricing, CISCO now has a midrange server that is probably a bit
cheaper than the price you saw before.  They are also rumored to be working on
a very small RS-232/Ethernet only server.  All there other servers can
talk to a variety of network interfaces.  CISCO gives discounts to
educational institutions and EDUCOM/BITNET members.  The MIDRANGE server
I recall (discounted) was about the same price as the (discounted) price
for the ANNEX (somewhere in the low $4000's for 16 lines).

-Ron