OVMS Printing to RICOH MP4000

[Greg A Mitchell]

I have been using OVMS 7.3 and 7.3-2 with many printers and had no significant issue until the addition of the RICOH MP4000 and MPC4000 printers.

Printer is supposed to support PCL5e.

When using the following config the printers rcv the jobs but reset all jobs and show no output:

SINOVB::> sho que/full tol4000
Printer queue TOL4000, idle, on SINOVB::"172.29.33.176:9100",
mounted form DEFAULT
/AUTOSTART_ON=(SINOVB::"172.29.33.176:9100") /BASE_PRIORITY=4 /DEFAULT=(FEED,
FORM=DEFAULT) /LIBRARY=HPPCL5_DEVCTL Lowercase /OWNER=[SYSTEM]
/PROCESSOR=TCPIP$TELNETSYM /PROTECTION=(S:M,O:D,G:R,W:S) /RETAIN=ERROR
/SEPARATE=(RESET=(UCX_RESET))

Any suggestions?

[Phil.Howell]

I have had to admit defeat with a Ricoh Aficio 2022 which is supposed to support PCL, but I did notice that they have a web page and download that enables you to print in unix. !?

http://support.ricoh.com/connectivity/cgi-bin/ctlpage.cgi?stage=2&soft=unixfilter&cr=rc&vers=2600

[Hoff]

I ran down the specs for one of the other Ricoh Aficio printers (insert obligatory "did anyone get the license tag?" joke here) that was recently discussed, and the general answer for that printer is use a Unix or Mac OS X or Windows box as a relay, or, well, "forget it". Here's that other thread:

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1436439

Many recent printers lack any rendering (host-based rendering is required), or the printers have some rendering based on (with HP) some flavor of PCL, and they will require host-based Postscript.

Department-grade printers will usually have

Note, too, that VMS itself does not have compatibility with a PCL printer, and doesn't have CUPS printing capabilities as do various Unix and Mac boxes.

You can (usually) get a printer that can convert and can render ASCII text by itself; ASCII text sent via the legacy lpr/lpd or telnet path.

Here's an article on this general topic:

http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/756

That also includes links to some discussions of compatibility and variations with the available PCL implementations there, and some options for (attempting) PCL-based printing.