Printronix T4204 - Manual (Page 78)

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Chapter 3 Menu Options
The Host Interface Menu enables you to select and configure one of many
types of interfaces between the printer and your host computer. The currently
selected interface is indicated with an asterisk on the control panel message
display. Each interface has its own submenu with a set of interface
parameters which can be configured.
IMPORTANT When switching between Twinax, Coax, or Auto Switching, the printer
will load the power-up configuration. Any settings made and not saved
before selecting these interfaces are lost.
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,
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, without
the user having 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.