Date   : Wed, 21 Mar 1984 06:54:26-EST
From   : erh%virginia.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa
Subject: Keyboard Delays While Printing

       The culprit is of course your slow printer.  A character is 
sent to the printer and the BIOS takes forever to send it out while
all you type in is lost.  The fixes are numerous and not too difficult:
*1* the best is to have an interrupt driven console input; this will
not loose a single chr ever (even during disk io, since you say yours
uses DMA which does not require disabling interrupts). *2* patch W*
to use printer ready function; this is easy and enables W* to scan 
for key input while monitoring the printer. *3* somewhat clumsy, but
should work: patch the BIOS so it checks the keyboard while waiting
for a chr to be output to the printer, then stuffs the key chr in some
location where it is retrieved by the console input function (best
would be, of course, to queue the key chars).