Having trouble sending data to an embosser

[Nikhil Nair]

Hi all,

I'm having some trouble sending files to my embosser from my new Linux 
machine, and wondered if anyone else had come across this sort of thing or 
had any idea what might be happening.

I'm running Debian Etch (soon to be released as Stable), 64-bit code on a 
Pentium D.  2.6.18 kernel with Speakup, running udev etc.

The embosser, a fairly old Index Everest, is attached to the parallel 
port.  The lp module isn't being loaded at boot-time, for some reason, but 
'modprobe lp' seems to fix this temporarily (unless I've just introduced 
more complications, that is).  If I don't use modprobe, /dev/lp0 is 
missing (as it's generated by udev), and lpr crashes.

Anyway, I've installed lpr and set it up to send files to the printer raw, 
without any filtering, as the files I'm using are already in Braille. 
However, the files are getting mangled en route, and while some characters 
are recognisable from the file, others have been changed, and I'm getting 
extra form feeds all over the place.

Does this ring a bell to anyone?  I've posted a question on the 
Debian-Users mailing-list, in case any of them have any ideas, but I guess 
they're not used to using embossers...

Oh, I tried switching the embosser off, and looking at the file in the 
spool area (/var/spool/lpd/lp/); it looked fine there, no mangling at that 
stage.

Cheers,

Nikhil.