min12xxw printer driver: greetings from the land that sensible hardware design forgot

["Blair Sadewitz" <sadewitz_(_at_)_gmail_(_dot_)_com>]

http://www.hinterbergen.de/mala/min12xxw/

This is a userland driver (for cups, etc.) for Minolta "winprinters",
e.g. 1350W.  In theory it should work, but in practice I always get
"device busy" errors.  I realize how such hardware fits in with the
OpenBSD stance on proprietary hardware, however given that this is a
userland program and not a driver in the kernel, perhaps I could avoid
having to find a way to afford a new printer (this printer was so
incredibly cheap for its speed and print quality).

In FreeBSD, they had this same problem, and a PR was filed and the
ulpt code patched.  Here is the patch (well, actually, the code that
was removed, heh):

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-usb/2005-July/001255.html

I tried this out, and it causes a spectacular cascade of errors. 
Anything more is regrettably outside the scope of my knowledge and
abilities.  Any takers?  Of course, I will assist in any way that I
can with the testing and debugging of any diffs, as I would hope that
no one kind enough to help me with this problem would ever have the
misfortune of being stuck with this idiosyncratically crippled beast
of a device.

Thanks,

--Blair

P.S. Anyone want to trade it for a used LaserJet 4 or greater?  I will
pay all shipping charges! HAHAHAHA!

--
"What is the practical application of a million galaxies?"

--Alan W. Watts