On May 17, 11:55 am, "Joe DeBiso" wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I have a clustomer with a printek forms pro 4300. The printer worked fine
> until yesterday. It just stopped printing. It was added to the system
> years ago using hpnpcfg. I tried deleting / re-adding and nothing. If I
> use netcat to send to port 9100, it prints, but drops the first character.
> This is on OS 5.0.6. Any suggestions??? Also... The printer prints fine
> from a PC.
>
> Thanks!
> Joe D

Maybe out of space on a partition or a log file got too big. 5.0.6
doesn't prune some logs, such as /var/spool/lp/logs/requests. Is any
other printer connected and if so, is it working?

I'm not familiar with that particular printer and don't feel like
looking it up. If it's PCL, try prepending the text that you're
netcat-ing with a reset (ESC E) and see if that doesn't solve the
first character issue. Probably not related to your original problem,
though.

--RLR

On Thursday 17 May 2007 14:55, Joe DeBiso wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I have a clustomer with a printek forms pro 4300. The printer worked fine
> until yesterday. It just stopped printing. It was added to the system
> years ago using hpnpcfg. I tried deleting / re-adding and nothing. If I
> use netcat to send to port 9100, it prints, but drops the first character.
> This is on OS 5.0.6. Any suggestions??? Also... The printer prints fine
> from a PC.

Make sure that /etc/getone has been renamed. If someone recently ran Custom
to fix missing symbolic links, the /etc/getone link will be re-created and
will break hpnp printing from what we have seen.

Dave

----- Original Message -----
From: "ThreeStar"
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sco.misc
To:
Sent: Friday, May 18, 2007 11:59 AM
Subject: Re: Network printing issue


> On May 17, 11:55 am, "Joe DeBiso" wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>> I have a clustomer with a printek forms pro 4300. The printer worked
>> fine
>> until yesterday. It just stopped printing. It was added to the system
>> years ago using hpnpcfg. I tried deleting / re-adding and nothing. If I
>> use netcat to send to port 9100, it prints, but drops the first
>> character.
>> This is on OS 5.0.6. Any suggestions??? Also... The printer prints fine
>> from a PC.
>>
>> Thanks!
>> Joe D
>
> Maybe out of space on a partition or a log file got too big. 5.0.6
> doesn't prune some logs, such as /var/spool/lp/logs/requests. Is any
> other printer connected and if so, is it working?
>
> I'm not familiar with that particular printer and don't feel like
> looking it up. If it's PCL, try prepending the text that you're
> netcat-ing with a reset (ESC E) and see if that doesn't solve the
> first character issue. Probably not related to your original problem,
> though.


They are a largish, medium speed, dot-matrix with multiple paper paths and a
mechanism that selects paper paths and moves them up to the print head.
You can have, depending on the model, anywhere from 1 to 10 different boxes
of tractor feed paper (pre-printed forms generally, hense the name Forms
Pro) loaded in at the same time. Then there are escape sequences you send in
the print job to select which form to print on. They emulate all the typical
dot-matrix emulations. Epson, IBM, possibly OKI, as well as some native
Printek codes. No pcl.

I have a few 3-track models out there hooked up to hp and intel parallel
port print servers, being printed to from sco osr5 boxes. But I never saw
this particular problem.
None of mine use hpnp. Some use netcat, some use lpd, all use my netcat/rlpr
wrapper printer interface which itself is just an enhacement of the various
netcat articles on pcunix.com, with the wrapper configured to itself use
epson or proprinter or dummy printer interface scripts.

I would like to know what kind of print server these are on. HP's or some
printek built-in option? or something else?

And what does "prints fine from pc's" mean? Printing from a pc via the
network to the print server? Or with the parallel cable directly connected
to the PC? Same parallel cable or a different one? or usb?

At this point a few basic things need to be tried to establish if the
problem lies in the printer, the cable, the print server, the spooler, or
the application.
Since it supposedly prints fine somehow, even though we don't yet know
exactly how, at least that probably eliminates the printer itself.
The netcat test possibly eliminates the spooler and application, which
narrows it down to the print server, though we don't know what data was sent
via netcat exactly and that might matter. This also assumes the printer and
print server have been power-cycled at least once to clear any possible
funny states.

I'm guessing the pc test was a direct test that didn't use the print server,
but did use the same parallel cable on the printer.
_If thats true_, then it looks like a bad port in the print server or
something else fried in the print server, or possibly merely screwed up
settings.

Continuing from that _unsafe assumption_, I'd try a different print server,
and/or investigate parallel port behaviour options in the print server.
Some print servers let you control things like PC bios's do about the speed
and bi-directionality of the port. Put it in legacy or spp mode.

If you don't have a print server handy, you can use any win2k or xp pc. Just
install print services for unix, put the printer on the pc directly, share
the printer, and use lpd. I use rlpr but you can also use the native rlp/lpd
support in sco, you just lose the use of a printer interface script on that
printer.

If it's a multi-port print server I'd try another port. In that case don't
use hpnp, or at least google up the workaround about deleting or renaming
some snmp related binary, else hpnp will check the status of port 1, find it
offline, and decree the whole print server offline.

Unless the "prints fine from a pc" test was done via the print server, in
that case there is probably no point touching the print server. In fact it's
best not to, otherwise you're just introducing more variables rather than
eliminating them.

In any case, before trying any of that I usually press the button on the
print server before even looking at anything.
You very neatly and easily and safely chop your possibilities right in half
all at once, without introducing any hardware or software or configuration
changes anywhere, just by seeing if the sheet or two of settings generated
by the print server itself come out ok or not. It's easy enough and safe
enough to tell the customer to do over the phone too.

--
Brian K. White brian@aljex.com http://www.myspace.com/KEYofR
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