[ale] Parallel Port Hunting

[johnmills at speakeasy.net (John Mills)]

ALErs -

My SuSE-9.3/WinXP laptop seems to have lost touch with its printers.

I have two printers on the parallel port. Earlier I could print to these
units from Linux, and now for some reason I cannot. Windows has no problem
reaching them on the same hardware, however. I can't check at the moment
whether the problem is restricted to parallel-port units or if it also
affects USB printers.

The two printers are very different technologies (Okipage vs. 6-color
Epson inkjet).

When I try to print test pages or from applications, the files just pile
up in /var/spool/cups but don't make it to the printer. I never see the
indicator lamp flash on the Okipage as it does when Windows is printing to
it, so I assume no data is being sent.

I verified the 'cups-*' RPMs and didn't see any obvious problems. I'm in
the middle of installing 'gutenprint', but I think the problem was already
occuring before I started that.

I would appreciate any advice on getting parallel printing back to work.

TIA.
 - Mills