HPUX & HP Designjet 500ps/With HPGL2 Card

[DELON KARRIM]

Hi all

I know that this is a printer related question, but when i posted in the printer section, I didnt get the response that i needed, so i implore you, please help if possible.

HPUX refuses to print to my a DJ500PS +GLX2 card. The lp command does not work, i have installed the net_dsnj script and still nothing. Linux and Windows are both able to print wel, but not HP-UX. I suspect that the net_dsnj script is not functioning as it should.

Any help would be greatly and sincerley appreciated.

Kind regards
Delon

[Bill Hassell]

How did you add the plotter? Was it with SAM? Does the printer have an HP JetDirect LAN card? Troubleshooting this requires very different steps if the plotter is on another server or has a JetDirect card. The net_dsnj script is fine but you must add the printer correctly. If this is a JetDirect card, you need to query the printer with hpnpadmin.

[DELON KARRIM]

Hi Bill

The printer does have a JetDirect card, with a valid IP. This was set using hppi. I also used hppi to add the printer using a pre-defined model script.

The printer has a JetDirect card as well as a GLX2 card.

Is there any documentation on this hpnpadmin tool and what it can do, as the printer is not closeby.

Kind regards
Delon

[Bill Hassell]

Yes, there is a wealth of documentation for all the hppi commands:

man hppi
man hpnpadmin
man addqueue
man hpnpf

and so on. As with all man pages, the "See also" section is very useful. Just run the command:

hpnpadmin -v 12.34.56.78

which reports back a lot of data about the connection. If all looks well, then run hpnpf and specify the diagnostic logfile. Be sure to use a small test file such as /etc/issue:

hpnpf -x 12.34.56.78 -N -l /tmp/hpnpf.log /etc/issue

This is a detailed network activity log file. NOTE: the man pages are located in the /opt/hpnpl directory structure so make sure that has been added to /etc/MANPATH so the man command can find them. Note also that there are man pages for most of the JetDirect model scripts.

Note that commands like hpnpf, hpnpadmin, addqueue, etc are in /opt/hpnpl/bin so this path must be included in your current $PATH or you can specify the fullpath:

/opt/hpnpl/bin/addqueue -q mynewprn -h 12.34.56.78

[DELON KARRIM]

Hi Bill

I do find alot on the hppi commmands, though nothing seems to work. hpnpadmin -v gives me some interesting output, though nothing on where my print is gone to. All that hpnpf -x produces is the log file which seems ok. The printer momentarily recieves a file, says processing then goes to the ready state once again.

If I use hppi, then spooler admin, and add a model script (net_dsnj), it works. I use AUTO as a language. But when i use hppi diagnositcs to test the printer setup, i can only print plain text, post script, or hpgl text. The options to print color do not work. if i use the lp -d command, the printer bombs out, saying "Warning 61:05, Error Processing Job, Flushing rest of job"
Thus, i have not yet been able to configure the app (UGS, PROE) to print yet, as i get the same error everytime.

On using the addqueue commmand, i get "Printer not supported"

This is one of the most challenging annoyances i've had to deal with, using HP-UX.

Kind regards once again,
Delon

[Bill Hassell]

Ahhh, the old DesignJet nemesis...has nothing to do with HP-UX. The lp spooler is a simple ASCII printer, soemthing that a DesignJet cannot do without help. After all, it has a pen plotter heritage. HPGL is a graphics language so printing plain text (like /etc/profile, etc) will immediately fail. You need to send an HPGL print command something like this:

echo "SP1;PA 0,0;PD;PA 1000,1000;PU" | lp -dxxxxx

This tells the plotter to select pen #1, move the pen to coordinates 0,0 then put the pen down and draw a diagonal line to coordinates 1000,1000 and lift the pen.

As for the lost jobs, anything sent to the printer that it does not understand is lost. So the key is to use the AUTO option which allows the printer to figure out what language (ASCII, Postscript or HPGL) is being sent. hppi is really designed for printers with plotters as an afterthought. I've never used it to test DesignJets.

When you print with lp, you must use the options to select the language and perhaps other features. To see these option, look at the man page for net_dsnj.

As far as addqueue, if the model of the printer isn't listed with the addqueue -l command, you can try downloading the latest DesignJet script from:

http://www.hp.com/pond/modelscripts/index2.html

No guarentees that this will help with addqueue. What you would have to do for addqueue is to supply the actual printer ID number so it selects the net_dsnj script.

As far as application programs, this is going to be tricky. If the apps put out a Postscript file, you could try manually configuring the printer to use Postscript as the default language (or HPGL if that's what the programs use).

If this seems a bit convoluted, it is the nature of plotter support...most of them are on MACs and PCs (with specialized driver) and unfortunately the DJ 500 has been obsolete for a while which makes getting help a bit difficult. You might try the large format printers forum here in the ITRC. I did see this:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=830929

There may be other hints...

[DELON KARRIM]

Hi Bill

Thanks for your insight. The only way i was able to solve this, was by setting up a Linux print server. Three clicks and it was solved. I hope that future versions of HP-UX support CUPS, as its so much easier.

Kind regards
Delon