lpt0 printer slows system response significantly
Anton Shterenlikht
mexas at bristol.ac.uk
Thu Nov 2 17:12:10 UTC 2006
On Fri, Nov 03, 2006 at 03:03:21AM +1100, Ian Smith wrote:
> On Wed, 1 Nov 2006 Anton Shterenlikht wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 01, 2006 at 10:49:36AM -0500, Lowell Gilbert wrote:
> > > * Change the printer port to polled mode. ["lptcontrol -p"]
> > > With this kind of hardware, it may even speed up your printing as well.
> > Thanks a lot, I think it does print a bit faster. But more
> > importantly I see virtually no performance degradation during
> > printing.
> >
> > On slower machines using interrupt mode might cause
> > significant degradation of the overall system perfor-
> > mance due to the interrupt service using most of the
> > CPU time. On such machines changing to polled mode
> > will balance the CPU load as well as result in
> > faster printing.
> >
>
> I'm not sure if that's generally true for slower machines; you haven't
> said (or I missed) what sort of printer you're using, what filters you
> run via printcap, and such? Not one covered by the existing para?
>
> I have a 1500c, bit faster than your 1700 @300MHz, that has printed lots
> of large files via gs without ever seeing any significant irq 7 load nor
> any slowdown of the machine at all - albeit using a slow old printer.
>
> Not that I see any problem with your proposed addition. Perhaps 'On
> some slower machines running fast printers using interrupt mode ..' ?
>
> Cheers, Ian
That's interesting.
I use lj2100 with apsfilter via printcap.
aps1|lp|laserjet;r=1200x1200;q=medium;c=gray;p=a4;m=auto:\
:lp=/dev/lpt0:\
:if=/usr/local/etc/apsfilter/basedir/bin/apsfilter:\
thanks
anton
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