Printronix t8000 Administrator's Manual page 183

Host IO > Centronics > Auto Trickle
This feature is used to prevent a host computer from "timing out" because
the parallel interface is "busy" for too long. This submenu is only available
when Host IO > Control > Interface is set to Auto Switching.
Disable The Auto Trickle feature is not used.
When the printer's buffers are almost full, the printer
begins to trickle data in from the host (at the rate set in
Enable
the Trickle Time menu) until the buffers start to empty
out.
Factory Default Disable
Host IO > Centronics > Trickle Time
When the printer is printing data from a host and a second print 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 submenu is only available when Host IO > Control > Interface is set to
Auto Switching.
Options ¼, ½, 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 seconds
Off Disable trickling of data.
Factory Default ¼ second
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