Yet another System 6 problem?

[mark@pokey.jsc.nasa.gov (Mark Manning)]

Ok.  I ran into something the other day which I had not run into
before.  What I did was to type up a two page letter and send it
to the Imagewriter II on my system.  I picked "best" and "compressed
vertically" as my two options and I asked for four copies to be
printed.  Everything went fine until the third page.  Then suddenly
the printer started printing solid black lines across the page.

Obviously the printer overflowed memory somewhere and/or simply went
haywire.  My question is - is the //gs' printer software not taking
into account the speed of the Imagewriter II?  Or did the printer
software simply try force feeding the printer (which couldn't take
it)?

The reason I wonder is because the Imagewriter is a serial printer
which should mean that the clear-to-send line should prevent such
things from happening.  Only if the software doesn't acknowledge what
the printer is saying should something like this happen.  Right?

Let me know. :)