UX printing to Dell 1815DN

[rmueller58]

the users to buy printer that will handle printing to port 9100 with HP commandline. (ranting for 6 years about it hasn't change normally smart people into ones with common sense..)

Simple question?

Has anyone on the board been able to print to a Dell 1815DN via hppi -s or addqueue setup?

Is this printer capable of handling handling command line variables (such as -oc, -olandscape)?? If so, how did you make it work?

Dell was NO help. ("Sorry, that is a Windoze based printer")

any insight appreciated. If not I will blow it in the bitbucket. They will have to find another printer to handle the accounting side.

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

Rex,

No, I've never done so myself - we stick to HP printers. I assume, from what I've read from Bill Hassell over the years, that the only way to get this to work would be to connect the printer via a HP JetDirect card, then add it as a network printer using HP's Jet Direct Printer Installer:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DriverDownload.jsp?〈=en&cc=us&pnameOID=18922&taskId=135&prodTypeId=18972&prodSeriesId=27349〈=en&cc=us


Pete

[Patrick Wallek]

We have some Dell printers that work great when printing from HP-UX. The Dell M5200 and 5100cn (color) work great.

We also have a Dell 3010cn, that does NOT work from Unix. When looking on the Dell web site, I discovered that they listed that printer as Windows only and no matter what I tried I could not get it to work. Even though port 9100 is enabled on the printer it won't work when printing from Unix. I monitored the printers web page when sending jobs from Unix and I would see the job arrive on the printer, but the printer itself would drop the job and it would never print.

The printer you mention, the 1815dn is listed on Dell's web site as supporting Microsoft® Windows® Vista5, Windows® (98, ME, 2000, Server 2003, XP, XP 64bits, NT 4.0),
Mac OS X Linux (Red Hat 8.0~9.0, Fedora Core 1~3, Mandrake 9.0~10.2, SuSE 8.2~9.2).

I suspect you will have about as much luck with this printer as I had with the 3010cn.

Some of their other printers, the 5210n for example lists UNIX in the "Compatible Client Operating Systems" section of their tech specs.

The web sites I have been looking at are:

http://www.dell.com/content/products/compare.aspx/laser?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

Then click on "Product Details" for the printer and when that page comes up, click on the blue "Tech Specs" tab. Then scroll down to "Compatible Client Operating Systems" to see what they say they support.

Good luck.

[rmueller58]

Thanks Guys,

I get pretty discouraged that you tell normally intelligent people to buy with the parameters given and things will work, go outside those parameters and the rules change.

I've gotten one of the higher end Dell's to work but not these cheaper ones.

Thanks again.. Points submitted.

[rmueller58]

As an aside we did create an EZSPOOL que but it will not handle CLI arguments for specialty formats (ie Compressed and Landscape).

[Bill Hassell]

The situation with printers is much more complicated today. You can NEVER assume that a printer will work on anything except Windows. Back in the good old days (tm), printer accepted ASCII and printed it. HP printers enhanced ASCII with escape sequences and called the result PCL -- ASCII on steroids. Apple adopted Postscript as the standard language but generally only Laserwriters would print a Postscript file. Oh, there was also EBCDIC, IBM's reinvention of ASCII. So, 3 languages, few, if any, printers could understand all 3.

Once the inkjets arrived, consumers made a major dent in engineering priorities. Cheap, cheap, cheap. More plastic, less metal, and the last resort, no brains. That's what happened with modems (remember the Windows-only modem?), and now printers are being lobotomized by removing the formatter board and replacing it with driver code. So, a Windows-only printer (aka, GDI printer, or PPA printer) cannot print "A". It knows nothing except dots. So the driver must first form the entire page in memory (computer memory), then interpret all the text, graphics, pictures, etc and turn them into dots on the page in memory. Once all that is done, the image is sent in dot rows to the printer.

All of this used to be done inside the printer, but now the (extensive) driver does all the work. Early versions of GDI printers caused a massive (100% CPU) load but was often overlooked because PC users only did one thing at a time (work, print, work more, print again...). Now not all printers are GDI or Windows-only. Most high end printers still have plain old ASCII or Postscript capability, which means they will work on HP-UX. HP-UX does not have drivers for printers, so only ASCII printers will work. Postscript can be made to work with Ghostscript add-ons, but GDI printers are just what they say: Windows-only.

So the issue is not whether HPPI or Jetdirect software and hardware will work, it's the fact that you can't create the special binary dot file needed by these dot-squirters. A huge amount of complicated code must be written to convert text and other stuff to dots on the page. Note that GDI is not limited to Dell -- HP started GDI (called PPA in early models) models with inkjets like the 720C and 820C, and now some lowcost HP LaserJet printers are Windows-only. If the printer is cheap, watch out!!!

Note that AIO (all in one) printers are often incompatible with HP-UX because they require a LOT of special software handshakes to make the fax, scanner, copier, etc work correctly. Although I didn't see the printer languages supported on the Dell website (for the 1815DN), I would give the printer away to someone that only uses a modern PC. Then purchase a 'real' printer for accounting. Look for the secret word ASCII or PCL, and perhaps Postscript (if your apps can create Postscript) and you'll be fine.

[rmueller58]

Bill, So true the old Oki391 days are long gone. The AIO's especially within our school districts are a popular purchase of administrators. The only one's I've been able to get work with any certainty are those with canon 5 engines. Xerox has a shell script system that creates ques and does some emulation but most I've had to tell them "Sorry Charlie, only good tasting Tuna get to be Starkist.."

Thanks again.

[Patrick Wallek]

Bill,

That's the best explanation of printing and why we can so many issues I have heard in a long time.

0 points please!

[rmueller58]

informed the school that the accounting side would be unable to generate anything other then Portrait uncompressed printing. The capability of the printer is robust for Windoze but not for UX.

I will reinterate our printer recommendations to all districts.. HP