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