zerox wc90 printer driver

[Donald Thaler]

We would like to add a zerox wc90 printer to our hp unix 11i rp7400 server and would like to know if we need to load down a special driver (we have a zerox wc65 printer already installed) for the new printer and where can we find it. The printer is currently accessable on our windows network.

[Bill Hassell]

There is not enough information. Is the printer connected to a Windows server and you are going to send your files to the server for printing? Or is the printer connected to the LAN. If it is on the LAN, does it use an HP JetDirect LAN adapter or is the LAN card built-in or otherwise not an HP card? There are 3 very different answers as to how to configure the printer in HP-UX.

Note that there are no printer drivers at all in HP-UX. Instead, printer scripts are used to encapsulate print jobs with specific options. HP-UX does not provide any scripts for non-HP printers, just generic scripts.

[Donald Thaler]

Where would i go to find a printer script for this zerox wc90? The printer had been previously setup in the unix environment by the last sys admin, but evidently the default printer script doesn't handle some of the special features of this printer.

[DCE]

You download the drivers from the xerox driver page:
http://www.support.xerox.com/go/prodselect.asp?Xlang=en_US&metrics=HDR

You not only need the drivers, but also the xerox progrma to mange the printers, in order to fully configure the printer. Once configured, it appears as any other to the system.

[Bill Hassell]

Unfortunately, like many printer manufacturers, there are no Unix drivers or scripts for their PC printers. If you search for the WC90, you'll find only Windows drivers. However, a search of the entire support site did reveal HP-UX at this page:

http://www.office.xerox.com/userdoc/PShare3/htm_9485.htm

This refers to something called PhaserShare which may or may not be the network card in your printer. There are some errors on that page: 9.x and 10.x are the only versions listed, both are obsolete. However, the instructions for 10.x will work for 11i EXCEPT there is no note about the required setting in SAM for BSD printer (it must be set)

Note that there is no custom printer script for remote printers. Remote printers (in HP-UX) are handled in a very primitive way and no -o options are passed over. So to use special features ion the WC90, you will have to write a wrapper script to insert the appropriate language codes into each print job.

Now in searching through several spec sheets for various printers, it seems to imply that they are JetAdmin compatible. Although JetAdmin has been obsolete for more than 5 years, this implies that some Xerox LAN cards may be compatible with HP's JetDirect protocol. Perhaps if you call Xerox, they can tell you.

Another way to find out is to use hpnpadmin to query the Xerox LAN card as in:

/opt/hpnpl/bin/hpnpadmin -A 12.34.56.78
or
/opt/hpnpl/bin/hpnpadmin -v 12.34.56.78

If the first query reports that the IP address responds as an HP JetDirect card, your options just got a lot better. The -v option will report on more details about the card.

If the card responds like a etDirect card, you can add the printer as an HP JetDirect printer. However, neither HP nor Xerox supply and printer scripts for HP-UX. Now the Xerox website cannot locate a WC90 -- is this really an XE90fx multifunction printer? If so, I could not find any documentation about PCL or Postscript so it is difficult to recommend a useful script except the "dumb" script.