Konica Minolta MFP's on DCPS/VMS

[EdgarZamora_1]

Hi all. Just wanted to ping the readers to see if anyone has any experience/success getting Konica Minolta Multi-Function Printers to work with OpenVMS (8.3) with or without using DCPS (2.7).

So far some of the issues I've encountered are:

1. Print queue goes into stopped state when printer is accessed in Administrator mode (front panel or web interface).

2. Haven't figured out rhyme or reason yet but sometimes jobs/printer wants paper from "bypass" tray (even if no special parameter is specified). I've tried overriding by specifying all sorts of /INPUT_TRAY entries (e.g. tray_1, tray_2, etc.) with no success.

3. Printer won't print double-sided (/param=side=2) on VMS. We are able to print double-sided on Windows.

Thanks for any input!

[John Gillings]

Hi Edgar,

Are you really still trying to do even slightly complex printing from OpenVMS?

I'd have thought that deceased equine had long ago ceased being a candidate for flagellation!

Especially with printers, the designers of which weren't even born when the most recent bytes of code were written anywhere in the OpenVMS printing pathways, let alone being formally supported.

Save your sanity!

[Rekha Aithal]

Hi Edgar,

DCPS does not support Konica Minolta printers.

If you use DCPS, it will consider printer as generic printer and all options may not work properly.

[Jon Pinkley · Accepted solution]

Edgar,

I assume you are referring to the BIZHUB line.

We have them, and use them from VMS with GrayMatter Software's ScriptServer print symbiont. It isn't free, but the people that wrote it support it.

The BIZHUB printers were not my choice, but with ScriptServer V6.0-3a duplexing works without any special tweaks.

The BIZHUB printers do not support the de facto standard "setduplexmode" and "settumble" commands that came before the standardized "Duplex and "Tumble" commands. If DCPS is generating the setduplexmode command, you will have to write postscript code to define these commands in terms of the Duplex command.

The BIZHUB printers do not support backchannel so there is very little feedback about the job. For example, I can't get ScriptServer to get page accounting to work with these printers, as it relies on the printer to provide the pages.

Jon

[Paul Anderson_7]

DCPS code was most recently changed by me in early 2009, so unless those who designed the Konica Minolta printers are toddlers, your statement, John, is not correct. With all due respect. :-)

DCPS is supported by HP, just with new developers.

The issue of 'tumble' vs. 'settumble' explains why duplexing isn't working. It is likely, with very little code on the part of the developers, to get this to work. Or the customer could write some PostScript code to substitute one for the other and put it into a device control library.

I would suggest you start with the "unrecognized" device control modules in the DCPS device control library SYS$LIBRARY:DCPS$DEVCTL.TLB. There are comments in those PostScript modules describing how to change things for unsupported printers.

You might also want to select paper by size and media type rather than by tray name.

And I assume you are using LPD or spooled LPD with DCPS, not raw sockets to port 9100.

Paul

[EdgarZamora_1]

Thank you for the responses. I am pursuing two options... I will try the third-party software recommended by Jon, and I'm also looking into doing some postscript modules as suggested by Paul.

[EdgarZamora_1]

I've gotten pretty much everything working except for duplex printing. I've narrowed it down to a postscript error "%%[Error: stackunderflow; OffendingCommand: exch ]%%" coming from the first "exch" command in LPS$$SETSIDES in DCPS$DEVCTL (well this is the first error encountered by the Konica anyway, who knows if there will be more after this one).

I'll open a call with HP, but they'll probably just say it's an unsupported printer.

[Wayne Gillan]

Hi,

We just faced the exact same problem, but have now got duplex working with our BizHub C280.

I made a copy of the dcps_lib library and in it, modified the lps$$setsides module. See attachement for what worked for us. Just had to use the /Duplex and /Tumble parameters. You should be able to do the same.

[EdgarZamora_1]

Thanks Wayne. I pretty much did the same thing, except I created a separate library (copy of dcps$devctl with modified lps$$setsides)just for the Minolta Konica queues. Didn't want to have a modified dcps$devctl overwritten by a future upgrade of dcps.