Printronix L5520 - Manual (Page 78)

Chapter 3 Host Interface Menus
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Auto Switching
Gives the printer the ability to handle multiple data streams
simultaneously. With Auto Switching, the printer can service hosts
attached to the serial, parallel, and coax/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, without the user having to
reconfigure the selected interface between jobs. The hotports are
Parallel and Serial.
Port Type
Selects the types of parallel, serial, and C/T (coax/twinax)
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 timout 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 value, but not too much shorter or else
the printer fills up its buffer too fast.