Managing printers and print jobs

About printer device connections

Each local printer must have a ``device special file'' associated with it. Device special files provide an interface to a device (such as a printer) and its corresponding device driver. These files reside in the /dev directory.

NOTE: Remote UNIX printers are associated with a remote host instead of a device.

The default local printer connections are three parallel devices (/dev/lp0, /dev/lp1, /dev/lp2) and two serial devices (/dev/tty1a for COM1 and /dev/tty2a for COM2).

To use these devices, you might need to add them to the system using mkdev parallel or mkdev serial. You can also use these mkdev commands to determine which devices are currently configured on your system. See the mkdev(ADM) manual page and ``Adding serial and parallel ports''.

NOTE: When specifying a serial device, make certain that you use the non-modem control device (for example: /dev/tty3a, not /dev/tty3A).