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

[Michael Wenk]

On Sunday 01 February 2004 06:16 pm, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> On Sun 01 Feb 04,  5:36 PM, Michael Wenk <wenk@praxis.homedns.org> said:
> > On Sunday 01 February 2004 01:09 pm, 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?
> > >
> > > the only thing i can think of is perhaps a flaw in the postscript or
> > > perhaps the printer's postscript interpreter.
> > >
> > > it'll happen to me once every 2 weeks - 1 month, so it's pretty
> > > infrequent. i can get around it by "printing" whatever i want to an
> > > bitmap file, and using gimp to print the file.  but that's kind of a
> > > rotten way to do things, and the quality stinks compared to nice raster
> > > postscript.
> > >
> > > pete
> >
> > Are you sure when you print to bitmap that its really printing PCL?
>
> no, i'm not.  printers have always been a big mystery to me.  how would
> you find out?
>
> > On the 4
> > series printeres(4si/4si MX) all graphics were sent as PS rather than
> > PCL. Do you have multiple systems managing the printer?
>
> no -- just linux.  but it gets shared by a bunch of different operating
> systems.
>
> > Also, as I recall, there
> > should be a way to dump the PS error log and see what is happening...
> > (You could on a 4si via one of the menus)
> >
> > Mike
>
> for real?  i'll have to google for this.  that would be _really_ useful!
>
> pete

Well, I admit I havent messed with printers in several years, there was a menu 
option(PS Menu maybe) that let you dump the error log.  Also, have it print a 
test page as this will show installed personalities.  I have never had a 
linux box control a jet direct printer(or is this parallel/usb?) , so don't 
have much experience with that.  At OSU we had two main problems, one was 
people would enscript an already postscript file, the other was people would 
force PCL when they wanted postscript (-o pcl)  I don't really remember the 
problem you are seeing, but I could have a faulty memory, or it could not 
have affected HP 4 series printers.  

Mike


-- 
wenk@praxis.homedns.org
Mike Wenk