It talks about the kinds of ports and cables, and also the kernel configuration you may need to enable FreeBSD to speak to the printer. If you have already connected your printer and have successfully printed with it under another operating system, you can probably skip to section Software Setup . Serial interfaces are common in the computer industry and cables are readily available and also easy to construct. Serial interfaces sometimes need special cables and might require you to configure somewhat complex communications options. Parallel interfaces use a parallel port on your computer to send data to the printer.
Parallel interfaces are common in the PC market.
Cables are readily available but more difficult to construct by hand. There are usually no communications options with parallel interfaces, making their configuration exceedingly simple. In general, serial interfaces are slower than parallel interfaces. Many newer parallel ports can also receive data from the printer, but only few printers need to send data back to the computer. And FreeBSD does not support two-way parallel communication yet.