[vox-tech] postscript printer: light goes on, nobody home.

[Jonathan Stickel]

Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> hi all,
> 
> i have an HP laserjet 6MP.  it works great on linux.  it's shared with
> other linux and windows systems.  no problems.
> 
> well, almost no problems.
> 
> every blue moon, i'll queue something with lpr, and the printer LEDs
> will flash like they normally do to indicate "i'm receiving data".
> 
> but after the data gets trasfered to the printer, the "data LED" and
> "ready LED" will remain on.  my printer manual says this state is
> called:
> 
>     "data is in the printer memory (form feed)"
> 
> and says to press the "go button" to start printing.  i hit the "go
> button", but nothing prints.
> 
> eventually, the data LED goes out indicating the printer is in the
> "ready for printing" state.  the job is gone.
> 
> it's like the printer receives data but just gives up on printing it.
> this happens on all the operating systems in the house: debian, suse,
> redhat, win2k and win98.
> 
> has anybody seen this happen before?  any guesses as to what causes it?

This sounds very similar to something I've experienced with an HP 4050, 
a networked double-sided laserjet in my department's computer lab.  It 
will hang with the "data" led flashing.  Since other people use it, I 
can't wait around so I cancel the job.  It seems to happen mostly with 
journal article pdfs with 3D graphics.  Strangely, I can print them just 
fine to a HP 4100 laserjet (single-sided).

> the only thing i can think of is perhaps a flaw in the postscript or
> perhaps the printer's postscript interpreter.

Yep, that's my guess to.  Not sure how to fix it.  Next time I might try 
bitmapping just the pages with the 3d grahpics to confirm my hypothesis.

Jonathan