[no subject]

>> And one of the problems with the Appletalk card is that its
>> Pascal 1.1 firmware is broken  (technote on workstation card anomaly - the
>> status call doesn't work),  Apple's suggested work around won't work in
>> this particular case.  
> 
> Why won't it work?  The work-around is not to call the STATUS call and just
> use the WRITE call, which performs the function automatically.  He can
> identify the workstation card and use such an algorithm, unless he's not
> using the firmware to write the characters, in which case it wouldn't
> print anyway.
> 
He is using the firmware I think.  The problem with using write instead of
status is his flow control is handled with polling.  If he uses write and
the firmware can't handle the char, it loops until it can (right?) and he
can't handle flow control from a excess of incoming chars if he is looping
in the firmware; so he needs to know if he can write to the card _before_
he writes to it, and this is where 'status' or its equivalent is needed.
I think it is a little more complicated than that in pt3.x as he may be
doing some buffering for the printer output if it is busy too.

If you choose one of the printer drivers which uses the basic entry points
and blindly writes, pt3.x doesn't lock up, but you drop chars.  Actually
this happens anyway on a GS printing with Appletalk (dropping chars, the
status call does not hang the program but it doesn't do the right thing either)
so you might say the workstation card and the GS are equally disadvantaged.
(I know that doesn't make any sense, but it is late and it isn't important
anyway :)  )

>> So, none of the problems involved the interrupt handling code that Greg uses.
>> It is faster than Apple's, and Greg will continue to use it.
> 
> It still kills the network for the large network I have at work.  For the
> small network I have at home, it works just fine.  It's also the terminal
> program I use.
> 
Try the 1 byte patch to pt3.code0 I put on csa2.  Does it help?  I haven't
noticed pt3 'killing' my Appleshare3.0 network, but it isn't heavily used.
A dozen Mac SE's, Laserwriter NT, 2 Appletalk IMW II.  What should I look
for, or do to test it?

> -- 
> ============================================================================
> Matt Deatherage, Developer Support Center, Apple Computer, Inc.
> Personal mail only -- please POST technical questions, questions about
> Apple and its policies, where to find documents and related inquiries.
> The opinions I express don't represent Apple, which makes us both happy.
> ============================================================================

  --Steven Nelson                    steven-nelson@uiowa.edu