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Lexmark Printers

 
Sanjay Tailor
Frequent Advisor

Lexmark Printers

Hello,

I have a D-box running 10.20. I would like to connect some Lexmark 4227 printers to the system. I think these are the same as IBM 4227 printers. The printers can do both parallel and serial communications. These printers are located a good distance away, so I cannot use a serial connection. I tried using an external Jetdirect card but the results were not pretty. What other options do I have? Is there a network alternative?

Any help is appreciated,

Thanks
Sanjay.
9 REPLIES 9
Rick Garland
Honored Contributor

Re: Lexmark Printers

Connecting through the network to the jetdirect cards should work. What was not pretty? Could it have been a driver issue?
Sanjay Tailor
Frequent Advisor

Re: Lexmark Printers

Hi,

I think it was a driver issue. The system could not ID the printer on the other end. I chose from a list but that list did not have many genric printers listed. I chose "To select dumb plot model script for printer" I was not sure which to use. Any ideas/ suggestions.

Thanks
Sanjay.
Rick Garland
Honored Contributor

Re: Lexmark Printers

The choice of drivers can be time consuming. I have done it the trial and error way.
Put a driver in, bounce the lpsched, test.

There are two locations in which to find a driver that might help you.
If you have installed the jetadmin software, look in /opt/hpnp/sh
Other location could be /usr/lib/lp/model

I have not worked with this particular printer but others I have worked with typically involves testing the drivers with the printer. Once it is determined which driver to use, note it for future purchases/acquisations.
Tim Malnati
Honored Contributor

Re: Lexmark Printers

Unfortunately, HP does not support query and setup of other manufacturer's printers, even though you have bought the HP solution (Jetdirect) to connect it to your other HP soultion (D machine).

Way back when, IBM had a competing printing standard. If I remember correctly it was called PPDS. In any event, most of the older IBM/Lexmark printers default to this standard. Many of these printers also support PCL emulation, but either require you manually change the emulation from the front panel, or shift it into the emulation with an escape sequence sent to the printer as an additional header to the print job. The PPDS standard will allow you to do minimal stuff with one of the generic drivers, but any formatting or font changes you may want to perform will have to be handled with escape sequences added by your application software. My suggestion is that you change the default power up emulation for the printer to PCL from the front panel and then use one of the older LJII or LJIII drivers to print to it.

Lexmark may be a totally separate company these days, but it is clear that their allegiance is still with IBM. You can find all kinds of support for their products for AIX, but you don't find MarkVision (their form of JetAdmin) suppoted on HPUX. This means that if you want complete support for their printers under unix, Big Blue is the only solution that I'm aware of. Looking at AIX is no real help either where their spooler is not implemented with scripts. Maybe MarkVision will come out for Linux allowing combined support there, but for now the only os that seems to be able to act as a complete print server for them both is NT. Not a real robust one either.
Sanjay Tailor
Frequent Advisor

Re: Lexmark Printers

Hello,

I tried differnet drivers in Jetadmin and finally found one that prints OK. I can send text files to the printer using lp and the printer works fine. I do not have the functionality to change fonts etc... as mentioned by another user. I might have to just change it at the front panel. I have yet to test a formatted file and so on..

Thanks for all your help

Sanjay
Rick Garland
Honored Contributor

Re: Lexmark Printers

If you have (or can find) the escape codes for the printer, you can embed those codes into a script that is sent to the printer before (or with) the actual print job and then have the printer reset after the print job. Could save the time and effort in manually playing with the front panel.
Chuck Zearfoss
Advisor

Re: Lexmark Printers

A good solution is to use Lexmark's Enhanced Print Drivers for Unix, which will support Lexmarks and IBM's (especially if they are newer IBM's cuz they are OEMed from Lexmark now).

Using JetDirect/HPPI, you can create the queue by putting in the IP of a HP printer that is on the network, then go through the configuration and select the model script you wish, etc. After setup is complete, edit the file to change the IP to that of your Lexmark printer.
One thing to keep in mind - if you are printing large jobs to the Lexmark with JetAdmin, and you run out of paper, get a jam, or a windows user sends a job to it, etc. you may see your JetAdmin job reprint from page 1 in the middle of the job.

It looks like the way to fix this is to change the community name string in the lexmark printer. 2 Ways -
1)Use telnet: Telnet 9000
2)Use Lexmark's MarkVision Professional software
a) under settings-network-tcp/ip, at the bottom
b) create a device policy for a print server (if you want to change alot of printers at one time)

JetAdmin and HPPI does SNMP GETs before the print data, one with community string of internal (which Jetdirect cards will answer, but no other vendor), and one with community string of public, which asks for the private mib location. If a printer responds to this one (as the lexmark does with the OID for it's private mib .641.), then the JetAdmin/HPPI will tend to do "status checks" by requesting SNMP OIDs when it detects a dataflow issue (don't know what kicks that off...). Anyway lexmark responds to the status OID request with "no such name" (cuz the OIDs are in HP's private MIB .11.) and then Jetadmin/HPPI restarts the print job from page one. If the community string name in the lexmark is changed from the default of public, JetAdmin/HPPI still performs the initial SNMP GETs, but gets no response in either case, and thus evidently thinks the printer is "dumb" and never does the status checks in the middle of the job, but instead just keeps sending data...
Hope this helps
Chuck
Steve Steel
Honored Contributor

Re: Lexmark Printers

Hi

Lemark has Markvision Pro which works well on UX for lexmark network printers

It is free from the net


Look at that as a solution

Neat program


steve Steel
If you want truly to understand something, try to change it. (Kurt Lewin)
MANOJ SRIVASTAVA
Honored Contributor

Re: Lexmark Printers

Also the printers can be managed by teleneting to the IP adress :port 8000 , you need to download markvison adn install is . the printer has to be identified as a printe in the /etc/hosts file and the steps are simple ones.



Manoj Srivastava