Auto Switching Submenu

Auto Switching

Gives the printer the ability to handle multiple data streams sequentially. With Auto Switching, the printer can service hosts attached to the serial, parallel, Ethernet, coax and twinax ports as if they were the only interface connected.

For example, if the host computer sends one print job to the RS-232 serial port and a separate print job to the IEEE 1284 parallel port, the printer's Auto Switching is able to handle both jobs, in the order they were received. The user does not have to reconfigure the selected interface between jobs.

Port Type

Select the types of parallel, serial and/or C/T interfaces which are connected to the printer. For example, if your printer is attached to one host with a Centronics connection and a second host with an RS-422 serial connection, you would select Centronics under the Parallel Hotport menu, RS-422 under the Serial Hotport menu, and Disable under the C/T Hotport menu.

Trickle Time

When the printer is printing data from a host and a second job is received by the printer from a different host, Trickle Time prevents the second host from timing out while it is waiting for its data to be printed. In order to support this feature, the port has to be able to accept data from the host and store it for future use.

For example, if the printer is printing a job from the serial port, and then receives a second print job from the parallel port, the data from the parallel port will “trickle” bit by bit into the printer buffer to prevent a timeout error from being sent back to the host connected to the parallel port.

The selected value is the time that the printer waits before getting the next byte of data from the host. The Trickle Time value should be less than the host time out value, but not too much shorter or else the printer fills up its buffer too fast. This function is not applicable for C/T hotport.

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Printronix P7000 user manual Port Type, Trickle Time, Auto Switching Submenu