Terminal and printer on 1 modem

[Paul De Bra]

In article <178 at loft386.UUCP> sdg at loft386.UUCP (Steve Goodrich) writes:
>I have an interesting problem:  I need a way to use both a printer
>and a terminal on one modem.  Multiplexers and stat-muxes are too
>expensive, so those items are out.  I'm using Xenix System V, version
>2.2.3 on an 80386 clone.  We are using an Arnet Multi-port board with
>4 serial ports on it, and we have one other serial port available on
>the machine.  One of the people on the machine is going to have to 
>take some time off, and she wants to be able to do her work at home.
>She is the head of our accounting department, and we NEED her to be 
>able to balance the books (especially at the end of the year).  In 
>order to do this, she needs to have both a printer and a terminal at
>home. 
>...

Most terminals have a "printer port". You hook up the terminal to the
modem and the printer to the terminal.

When you want to print something the computer sends a special control
character (or escape sequence) to the terminal, which "turns on" the
printer port. Everything the computer sends will be displayed on the
screen AND printed at the same time. Yet another control character will
"turn off" the printer port.

This is a very common setup, and I haven't come accross terminals without
printer ports yet. However, there are no standards on the control-chars
required for turning on/off the printer port. But whatever they are,
a small shell script can do the trick, so she won't have to log off
and she doesn't need a second modem.

Paul.

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