HP color LJ 3600 Chosen personality not available

[joyce k. yung_1]

I am running HPUX 11.23 and try to set up the HP color LJ 3600 as one of the network printers.

Everything on the hp side looks alright but I keep getting the "Chosen Personality Not Available" on the printer.

I read some of the forums and know that there is some problem with the driver. My question is what driver are we talking about?

Thank you so much.

[OldSchool · Accepted solution]

Hi Joyce,

The issue appears to be that that printer is not supported under HP-UX. Please refer to the following doc re: supported os.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06a/18972-236251-236268-15077-f51-501044.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

also, see the following thread:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1067403

hp seems to recommend the 3800 series instead, which supports PostScript. the 3600 uses "JetReady"?

[joyce k. yung_1]

Thank you so much oldschool.

[Bill Hassell]

The 3600 is NOT a normal printer at all and can only be used on a very limited number of platforms (recent Windows only, no Unix, nothing else). The reason is that it knows nothing about ASCII or Postscript, it only understands a special HP language called JetReady. JetReady is a raster language which means it is nothing but binary dots and that means the OS must have a very complicated driver that knows all about fonts and graphics and can convert this into a full page of dots for the printer.

Whether it is an HP printer or other brand, never assume that the printer will work on HP-UX unless it states ASCII or PCL support. The raster language (aka, GDI or host-based) is a cost reduction design but eliminates compatibility with most non-PC OS's.

[joyce k. yung_1]

Thank you so much. We are thinking maybe we can send the print job from hpux to a print server. That is to set up a print queue on the print server and then send the print job from the print server to the printer. The printer has a jetdirect box attach to it.

Will let you know how it goes. Thank you.

[Bill Hassell]

This is a very tricky task. An appliance print server (like the HP JetDirect external box or non-HP appliances) will be nothing but as passthrough device, giving you the same error. Using a PC-based print server will need Unix print services installed and enabled, but may simply pass the HP-UX file through without translation.

[OldSchool]

Joyce,

You might want to look at Remote Print Manager (RPM) from www.brooksnet.com.

It runs on a Windows box and allows you to send jobs from HP-UX to windows as a "remote" print queue. I've used this, and number of years ago, and it did what I needed.

Note that you *probably* will have to create a separate print queue for each set off printer features you wish to use, and print to the appropriate queue.

For example, one queue for landscape and one queue for portrait.

[joyce k. yung_1]

We set up a print queue on the window 2003 print server and then I set up the printer on HPUX as a remote printer from the hpux to the window 2003 print server.

It does print something but not everything. Anything that is ASCII base seems to have no problem to print out. However, when the report have form and documents in it, it only print out the documents. I guess the print server does not understand the PCL form language and just chop out all the form part and print out the documents.

Not knowing who to do next at the moment and any insight will be greatly appreciated it.

Thank you

[Bill Hassell]

You have no choice but to exchange the printer with one that is designed for you applications. The Win2003 server is translating ASCII characters into a usable image, but as I mentioned, this printer does not understand PCL escape sequences. Because your program has PCL codes in the program, you are immediately limited specific printer models (not the 3600).

That's why Windows has a rather extensive printing subsystem and printer metalanguage. In Windows, your program has no idea what kind of a printer it will be using. The program just issues a series of call to the printing API and the driver does the rest. There is nothing like that in HP-UX.

PCL is upwardly compatible but HP is the largest printer supplier in the world but has many models that are not PCL compatible. Check with your application developers to see which version of PCL is required for their code (PCL1,2,3,4,5,6,6e) and which printers are known to work correctly with the code they are using.