Printer Struggle

[Bill Brutzman]

We have a legacy Printronix P300 impact printer running on an HP-9000 E45 server. We use a standard printer cable (Centronix-to-D35/Parallel) to connect the printer to the HP-9000.

We would like this printer to work with our new HP-Ux Itanium Server.

Printronix tech support indicated that the electronic hardware in the P300 printer is only 10 cps, too slow to work with an external HP JetDirect Print Server.

When I configure the print server and try to send a print job, the printer will print one character at a time when toggling the ON-LINE button on the printer.

Not working is a print command such as

lp -dpr0 print.test

On the legacy server it invokes the driver:

/var/spool/uv/PR0.drvr containing...

slp -c132 -i0 -n <&1
cat -

The unix path is: /dev/c1t0d0_lp

I need help understanding what the "<&1" does and how it all works with "cat -".

I am writing to inquire if it is possible to make this a shared printer such that the new server can print to it.

[RAC_1]

What the following command slp -c132 -i0 -n <&1
cat -

does is taken input from std. in ( < &1_ and print to std. out ( cat -)

Can this printer be configured with ip addresse? if yes, you can configure it as remote printer and thus can be configured as shared printer. (i,e set it as remote printer on diff. hosts)

[Bill Hassell]

This isn't an issue with the OS, it is the difficulty of standardization with the Centronix interface. There is no problem with the slow speed of the printer and the JetDiret External box, it is likely the handshake method between the JetDiret box and the printer. You can see if the JetDirect box will printer a selftest page correctly by holding down the button on the JD box for 5 seconds. If you get a complete listing with no hangs or missing/incorrect characters, then the JD box should work OK.

As far as slp, it is a legacy (old) interface into the parallel driver that controls basic spacing functions. It has no meaning for a remote or network printer. The <&1 is a shorthand to redirect the output of cat to the printer, very non-standard.

Your best choice is to let the E45 act as a print server. The default for HP-UX is to enable print server capability, so on the Itanium, just use SAM to setup a remote printer pointing to the E45.

[Bill Brutzman]

1. It does not appear to be possible to config the printer with an IP address.

2. JetDirect self-test yields no result.

3. When trying to make it a shared printer, and then printing standard ascii text, all that comes out is a blank page [form feed].

4. While I am trying to keep hope alive, it appears that there is not much hope...

[Bill Hassell]

You wrote:

> 1. It does not appear to be possible to config the printer with an IP address.

The external JetDirect box needs a DHCP or BOOTP server to give the box an IP address. You manually can do this with a PC using a peer-to-peer (crossover) LAN cable and running arp to create a route from your PC to the uninitialized External box.

> 2. JetDirect self-test yields no result.

That is the biggest problem. The JD box performs a very simple ASCII transfer so with no results, there are 2 possibilities: the JetDirect box is no longer working, or the printer is simply incompatible with the JetDirect box. Do you have any other printer with a parallel interface? If so, connect the JD box to that printer and try the selftest. If it works, the Printronix box simply does not have a compatible parallel interface (see man cent on your HP-UX system to see the complexities).

3. When trying to make it a shared printer, and then printing standard ascii text, all that comes out is a blank page [form feed].

Ah, since the printer does work on the E45 using a direct connect cable, then the remote printer is also working. Here's the issue: You must add the printer as a remote printer and do *NOT* check the box that says "BSD Printer". This tells the Itanium spooler that the remote system is SysV-compatible and -o options can be processed by the remote system.

Now test the ASCII printing using the tool: ux2dos on the Itanium box as in:

ux2dos /etc/nsswitch.conf | lp -dyourE45printer

Remember that lp demands that there be no space after options (ie, lp -dmyprn). If this works OK, but a straight lp command without ux2dos produces a stairstep down the page, then there may be an incompatibility with the Itanium spooler and the E45 spooler. The stairstep is due to text being printed as it is stored on disk (text+LF) rather than text+CR+LF). I get all patches related to lp on both your E45 as well as the Itanium.

4. While I am trying to keep hope alive, it appears that there is not much hope..

[Bill Brutzman]

0. Wow...I was not aware of the "cent" command. I will play with cent and try to follow-up.

1. Forget about the new Itanium server for a moment. I have been unable to get the "lp" command to work at all on the HP-9000-E45. Rather, all that works is the awkward "slp" command line. Thus, the printer is not engaged with the spooler.

2. The JetDirect works ok on another printer and with this printer. This printer with a JetDirect only prints out one character at a time by toggling the ON LINE button.

3. Bill, thanks very much for writing...

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

Ahh, I thought the E45 was OK. This definitely sounds like a Centronics compatibility issue. Try creating the 6 different device files and see while one works. You don't need slp to test this...just use ux2dos and redirect the output to the printer device file:

ux2dos /etc/nsswitch.conf > /dev/lpr3

where lpr3 is one oe the several versions found in man cent.

[Bill Brutzman]

Printronix (paid) tech support had a few suggestions. Their first suggestion worked...JetDirect settings...Properties...parallel mode = Centronix...parallel handshaking = nACK only.

While I have not fully tested it yet, quick look indicates that in this mode I can add the P300 to the HP spooler and I can print out test ascii. I am not sure yet about form feed.

[Bill Hassell]

The form feed is supplied automatically by the printer script but only at the end of the job. Now if your application is counting lines (very archaic) then then selecting the right font characteristics is the responsibility of the program. HP-UX scripts do not count lines and provide automatic form feeds for every page. For hardcopy devices, this has always been an interesting problem to resolve. New printers have both a carriage control tape (and associated markers for end-of-page ejects) as well as a skip-over-perf setting. The Printronix tech ref manual should help figure this out.

[Bill Brutzman]

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