parport question

[Ognen Duzlevski]

Hi,

I have sent this question to the people listed in the parport
kernel directory (the maintainers) but have yet not received a reply and
I am not sure if this is exactly a linux-kernel question.

I have a printer that worked fine under linux (redhat/lexmark 3200) for a
long time, then I switched over to 2.4.18 and debian and it stopped
working. I compiled the parport support into the kernel, I did that with
2.4.19, I did it also as modules, I tried 2.5.45, still won't work, not
even a cat test.txt > /dev/lp0

The dmesg shows that the printer is recognized correctly:

Nov  9 13:06:32 gemelli kernel: parport0: PC-style at 0x378 (0x778)
[PCSPP,TRISTATE]
Nov  9 13:06:32 gemelli kernel: parport0: irq 5 detected
Nov  9 13:06:34 gemelli kernel: parport0: Printer, Lexmark Lexmark 3200
lp0: using parport0 (polling).
lp0: console ready

The BIOS has a ton of settings such as "auto" or "normal" - I have tried
them all, tried forcing the DMA / IRQ from the BIOS and then feeding these
values to parport_pc, still won't work. I have tried all combinations of
Normal, ECP, ECP+EPP or EPP solely, won't work.

I then installed vmware and windows nt as a guest OS, under the same
kernels. I set up parport0 to be used by vmware and, it prints from
Windows nt (so I know the printer is fully functional).

Any ideas, help would be appreciated. Sorry if this is not the place to
post the question but I have tried google, linux-printing.org, usenet to
no avail.

CHeers,
Ognen