My understanding, though I last looked in to this a few years ago, was that LocalTalk was not supported by Linux or any of the free BSD's (at least via a serial port) and probably never would be due to difficult timing issues. However, you can buy (for ~$100, I think) a LocalTalk to EtherTalk adapter from a company like Asant� that should allow you just to set up AppleTalk over ethernet (which is really easy, just make sure support for AppleTalk is enabled in the kernel) and then have the adapter convert between the EtherTalk network and the LocalTalk network. I have done this with an old HP LaserJet and a Centris 650 running NetBSD (it was quite a while ago) and it worked without any problems. See psf and papd man pages for more information on sharing printers over AppleTalk and printing to AppleTalk printers (they're found in the netatalk package).
On the other hand, if it's a serial printer and not LocalTalk (many of the old low-end Epsons were, I think), you should be able to set it up without any extra fuss using CUPS and gimpprint. CUPS has good documentation and a nice web-based configuration program, I highly recommend it. You should also be able just to use ghostscript (you'll to need to determine the right DEVICE flag, though) and send the output to the straight to the serial port. Nick On Tue, 24 Sep 2002, CK wrote: > I wrote: > > Can anyone give me a quick shot at setting up a localtalk connection > > under linux for printing (docs on this seem to be a bit sparse google- > > wise) ? > > maybe because it's so easy ... the printer is just /dev/ttyS1 it only > prints garbage right now but I'm getting there I guess. > > regards, > > x ______________________ Nick Taylor
