Current low end laser printers for hostprinting ?

[rmueller58]

All,

I need to get a list of current low end printers that are being used in HP/UX 11.00)(jetdirect compliant) environment.

HP seems to be building printers without capability to print from HP/UX.

Can you all make recommendations of devices you are using and your near term experience with defining the queues on HP/UX using hppi?
Other then what is on the model script listing.

Thanks

Rex M
Educational Service Unit #3

[Patrick Wallek · Accepted solution]

We've been using Dell 5210 and 5300 laser printers recently. They work pretty well.

When defining with HPPI I have to -- 1) ignore the error when HPPI is trying to talk to the printer and tell it to proceed anyway, 2) When configuring the jet direct part, tell it that is an 'other' connection (option 4), 3) I use the netgenericprinter model script. In the list of models it is towards the bottom of the list and something like "HP Laserjet compatible printer"

[rmueller58]

Thanks Patrick

With HP changing models on the lower end (ie the 1200, 1320, 2200, it becomes difficult to know which one to send for purchasing.


I do believe a couple our districts have dell 5xxx's

[Bill Hassell]

The easiest compatibility test is whether the printer supports PCL (not Postscript) which is really ASCII with enhancements. The secret words host-based, GDO, PPA, JetReady (maybe some others) are stay-away flags -- they won't work at all.

The JetDirect model scripts for the printers are a mess...there does not seem to be any support at all for HP-UX (or Solaris or Linux or AIX, etc) except an occasional update every few years. Meanwhile, there are a dozen new LaserJet models released every year (for PCs). Now the good news is that for virtually all of the most used -o options found in the model scripts are the same for all HP printers that support PCL. So the general script net_ljx000 is good for most every printer. Naturally, using -o tray4 does require that the printer have a tray4, but -o c and -o 12 and -o landscape all work just fine.

The vast majority of lp printing (not printing from within an application) is plain ASCII so model scripts are not really a big problem. You can override hppi's choice of script by using the -i option in addqueue when you create the printer queue.

[rmueller58]

thanks closing thread.