using jetadmin with non HP printers

[Belinda Dermody]

We have two Dell5300 printers on the network and they want me to add them to our HP 5470 HP-UX 11.11 system, what do I have to get to add them, when using Jet Admin those printers do not show up in the model selection...

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

You didn't expect them to did you? Assuming that this printer supports the port 9100 JetDirect protocol, you should select a HP Laserjet that this model supposedly emulates. You may have to play with several choices from the drop-down list before you find one that works well enough.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

I would start with something like a LaserJet 4000.

[Haniza]

You may want to refer to these previous threads:
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1016461
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=884107

[Bill Hassell]

To my surprise, there are a couple of non-HP NIC cards in non-HP printers that emulate the (very) proprietary handshaking on port 9100 that JetDirect cards use. A couple of notes:

If you are truly using the jetadmin command and not the hppi command, you need to swremove thaqt software as it has been obsolete for almost 7 years and has big Y2K problems. The replacement is hppi (HP Printer Installer) and can be downloaded from:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=18922&prodTypeId=18972&prodSeriesId=27349&swLang=8&taskId=135&swEnvOID=7

(sorry about the ugly URL)

The other note is that JetDirect cards and printers are provided from the HP printer division and therefore have zero, nada, nothing for non-HP printers (and actually have very little for DeskJet and OfficeJet as these are designed for PCs).

So if hppi can see your printer, it means that it responded on port 9100 with the correct response and can be added with hppi. Since HP supplies no customized printer scripts for non-HP printers, you can use one of the dumb/generic scripts (almost no options), or a similar printer model. The LaserJet 4000 or the LaserJet 4 may work. Basic printing will likely work but -o options (see man pages for net_lj4x and net_ljx000) may or may not work. It all depends on how much the Dell printer tries to emulate an HP printer.

[Belinda Dermody]

As always, thanks guys for the quick and accurate answer, Bill, I am an old dog with old memories, started with jetadmin but we are using hppi, just can't change old habits, but 157 days to retirement though.