13 Sep
2007
13 Sep
'07
2:22 p.m.
OTOH, I have set up many a serial printer. RS232 was a
complete pain
in the **** and I am very glad to see it die. Start bits, stop bits,
I wasn't aware RS232 had died, at least not on this list (I am on
classiccmp, right?). Looking around me, I can see well over 100 RS232
ports, and _no_ USB prots (or indeed machines that could take USB ports).
word length, parity, baud rate - hateful. Apple could
do it right in
1984; there was no good reason for everyone else in the industry to
To be fair, the Apple serial printer interace was only easy if you wanted
to link an Apple printer to an Apple computer. If you wanted to use some
other printer on your Mac is was about as difficult as doing that with
any other compter. Similarly, linking an HP computer (say an HP150) to an
HP printer was alost as easy -- sure there were the various parameters to
set up, but the manual took you through them (basically, 'set this
option to this value, in the end the screen will look like this').
screw it up.
I've met only one device that strictly followed the RS232 standard, and
that was the HP82164 interface. And a right pain it is too, since nobody
else followed that standrd.
-tony