DEC VAX and Kyocera 3800/ 4000 printers

[lpiazz2]

Hi!

We are having problems with our DEC/ Vax system and printing with the Kyocera 4000. When printing with a Kyocera 3800, the printing, when printing large files, would print consecutively. With the Kyocera 4000, the pages would have a 6 second delay. Any know issues with Kyocera 4000 and DEC? Any thing that could cause delay in printing on the DEC/VAX side? Configuration?

Thanx,


Lou

[Jeremy Begg]

I would imagine there's a subtle difference between the configurations on the two printers.

Please supply the output of these commands:

$ UCX SHOW VERSION
$ SHOW QUEUE/FULL queuename

where 'queuename' is the name of the printer queue associated with the Kyocera 4000 printer.

If the Kyocera 3800 printer is still attached to the system and there is still a printer queue pointing to it, please run the SHOW QUEUE command (above) for that queue also.

[Jon Pinkley]

Lou,

I have no experience with these printers, but a web search shows these support multiple types of interfaces, including parallel and Ethernet.

How are you connecting to the printer, and what software on the VAX is being used for the print symbiont? I.e. are you using some tcp/ip connect and LPR, TCPIP$TELNETSYM, or via the parallel port?

Get a printer configuration page from the 3800 that is working, and one form the 4000 that has the delays and compare them. If the printer is configured to autoselect from multiple input ports (i.e. Parallel, Ethernet) on the 4000, that can cause delays depending on the implementation.

Was this a "drop in replacement" of a 3800 with a 4000? You may want to check the settings on the 4000 and 38000 to see if they are configured differently. Are the printers being shared with windows?

Can you share the configuration details of the print queues that were used with the 3800 and the 4000?

The more information you can supply, the better answers you will get, and you are also much more likely to find the answer yourself if you gather this info.

Jon

[lpiazz2]

Hello.

Attached is a file of the out put for the kyo3800 with "show queue/full". Here is the output:

ENVAXA:: $ show queue/full rcv$kyocera_dock
Printer queue RCV$KYOCERA_DOCK, idle, on ENVAXA::NLP35:, mounted form DEFAULT
/BASE_PRIORITY=4 /DEFAULT=(FEED,FORM=DEFAULT) /LIBRARY=KYOCERA Lowercase
/OWNER=[SYSTEM] /PROCESSOR=MULTINET_STREAM_SYMBIONT
/PROTECTION=(S:M,O:D,G:R,W:S) /SCHEDULE=(NOSIZE) /SEPARATE=(RESET=(RESET))
ENVAXA:: $


I cannot use the other command "ucx show version".

The printer is using TCP/IP. I have already compared config. pages, and revieed the settings.I'll check to see if the 4000 is set to autoselect from multiple input ports.

Yes the printers are windows printer too.

I have more info, but I dont think I can attach everything. I you guys can give me an email address, I can send saved web shots of the 3800 and 4000 config. info.

The programmers/analysts are already hot on this. No solution has beed found yet. I dont work on DEC /VAX, just a little admin and network printer support.

Let me know what other info you need and I'll try yo get it.

Sorry it took so long to reply.


Thanx,

Lou

[Jon Pinkley]

Lou,

You are using Multinet as your TCP/IP stack, and I don't use that, so I am not going to be much help there. However, my guess is that the MULTINET_STREAM_SYMBIONT is similar to the TCPIP$TELNETSYM and communicates with the printer via a raw TCP port. With TCPIP$TELNETSYM, this port is visible, but it appears that the Multinet symbiont must have this information stored with a pseudo device (your NLP35).

You are going to need to contact Kyocera and see if you can get technical information about the differences between the 3800 and the 4000. Unfortunately, most printer vendors no longer have any technical support people that have ever heard of VMS, so you will need to ask the questions using unix or linux terminology. Don't be surprised if they ask you if you are using the latest "printer drivers" (which is really a Windows version of what VMS calls a print symbiont). That will be your clue that they don't have a clue about VMS, and are just following a script.

You showed us the queue for the 3800, is the 4000 now connected to that queue?

I just did a forum search for Kyocera, and there have been previous Kyocera printers that had replacements that were not 100% compatible. This isn't a Kyocera specific issue, in general, as new printers come out, the emphasis is on low cost, and support for the most popular clients. VMS doesn't fall into that category.

If you can reproduce the problem from a linux box, you will have a much better chance of getting the attention of Kyocera, unless the lack of support is going to affect a large purchase.

You should also talk to Process Software, the current maintainers of the Multinet product.

We have had issues using TCPIP$TELNETSYM with certain laser printers. The emulation of the laserjet "raw tcpip" port is not equivalent to a laserjet (port 9100). I would suggest using wireshark on a PC to decode the conversation between the 3800 and the 4000 printing the smallest file that exhibits the problem. As long as Multinet can capture a tcpdump file, that file can be transferred to the PC and analyzed, if you don't have an ethernet switch with a monitoring port (or a non-switched hub).

Good luck.

Jon

[Anton van Ruitenbeek]

Was the 3800 printer also connected/used as MS-Windows printer ?
Probably the IP-timeout on the printer is 6 sec. ?
I had previous (about 15 years ago) printers in MS-Windows/IP/IPX-SPX configurations (multi protocols at one time) and these had also time timing issues. If I'm remember correctly this was also a problem of reconnecting/give free from the printer on the printer self.
Sometimes we even needed a reboot of the printer because one of these protocols didn't gave the printer free anymore.

AvR