JetDirect & Non HP printer config

[Brian Emmerich]

i use a 9000/806 (E25) and
HP-UX B.10.20
i just installed a JetDirect model J4101B and
the latest JetDirect Printer Installer for Unix
the above physical and software installation appears to be successful.
the hard part for me is that I want to use an Eltron Orion thermal printer on that port.
I can telnet to the device and using HP's suggested test i can get the printer to respond to the commands via telnet
however, i can not get it to work any other way. the model script i used during install is the dumbplot_printer.
neither Eltron nor Zebra are willing to help me on this. can anyone out there shed some light? surely I can't be the first one to try this.
I appreciate any help given.

[James A. Donovan]

I find it very disturbing that the printer manufacturer is unwilling to help you, but...try going through the manual for the printer to see if the printer supports an HP Emulation mode. If it does, set it to that modeand choose that printer/mode from the list given to you by JetAdmin.

[Tim Malnati]

I have to agree with Jim. This is a specialty printer not something manufactured for printing correspondence. My first thought would be to send it back to where it came from.

I any event... I took a quick look on their website and noticed that many of their printers support page mode and line mode. Page mode is probably the choice that will be needed. I didn't bother to look at any of their manuals, but my guess is that you are going to need to send a variety of escape sequences to the printer to get it to work the way you need. In actuality you need to write your own driver.

[Mark Mitchell]

When I set up non-hp printers, I make the emulation on it "dumb". I know that it is not in the list, but it works. Then if there is any comnpression to be done i do it within the program. Jetadmin just send the data stream along raw.

[Brian Emmerich]

Jim, Tim, and Mark

thanks for your help. you were all on the right track. this printer model(Eltron Orion) uses the EPL2 command language. there is a command to enable/disable windows mode. i had to place the printer in dump mode and send the disable command to the printer. now it takes the instructions from my application just fine. the jetdirect is configured with the dumbplot_printer driver and i send all the data through raw.