LPTCONTROL(8)

💅 lptcontrol(8) — ok so bestie, let's talk about your parallel port

Heyyy so this is the manual page for lptcontrol, from section 8 of the System Manager's Manual, and it's literally a whole utility for manipulating the lpt printer driver. Yes, printers. Yes, parallel ports. We're going vintage today and it's giving retro-tech main character energy. ✨

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

lptcontrol -e | -i | -p | -s [-d control_device]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

Okay so the tea: the lptcontrol utility is what you use to set the mode of individual lpt(4) devices — and there are four flavors of mode to pick from: interrupt-driven, extended, standard, or polling. Pick your fighter. 🥊

Heads up bestie, this part is important: when a printer gets switched from one mode to another, the change only takes effect the next time the device is opened. So don't come for lptcontrol if nothing happens instantly — it's not being shady, it's just how it works. 😭

So what even is extended mode? Extended mode is literally anything the parallel port interface can support. For an ECP/ISA parallel port, it may be FIFO+DMA or ECP. That's the whole definition, no cap. 🦋

The following command line options are supported:

• -e — turn on extended mode. Fancy mode activated. ✨
• -i — turn on interrupt-driven mode. Let the interrupts do the talking. ⚡
• -p — turn on polled mode. Not me checking on you every five seconds, but yes, that's polling. 💀
• -s — turn on standard mode, i.e., turn off extended mode. Back to basics, lowkey iconic. 🎀
• -d control_device — set the mode of the printer control device specified by control_device. The default value for control_device is /dev/lpt0.ctl. 🫶

And one of -e, -i, -p or -s must be specified. Not optional. Non-negotiable. Periodt. 👑

🧚 FILES 🧚

• /dev/lpt? — printer devices
• /dev/lpt?.ctl — printer control devices
• /sys/i386/conf/GENERIC — kernel configuration file
• /boot/device.hints — device hints for the parallel port chipset driver, ppc(4)

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

lpt(4), ppc(4), device.hints(5) — go read these too, iykyk 💖

⭐ HISTORY ⭐

The lptcontrol utility first appeared in FreeBSD 1.1.5. A legend. An era. We stan. 👑

🍓 AUTHORS 🍓

Geoffrey M. Rehmet — thank you for your service, king 🫡

💀 BUGS 💀

Okay so this is the messy part, and the manpage itself is calling it out: the control device name should never have been an option, but should have been an optional argument. Because of this, a single argument is treated as a device name. That's the whole bug note. Not me side-eyeing 2004 design decisions 🙈

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And that's the page, bestie! This one's from Debian, dated October 1, 2004, and it's LPTCONTROL(8) all the way down. Go forth and configure your parallel port responsibly 💜🦋