macmillan%wnre.aecl.cdn%ubc.CSNET@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA (John MacMillan) (06/20/86)
Most of the laser printers on site, that have a VAX queue, are also being used locally by a local Rainbow through a manual switch. i.e. When they want to print from the Rainbow the switch is turned to the Rainbow position; when they want to print from the VAX the switch is turned to the VAX position. Since logging into the VAX to stop the print queue is very tedious, a lot of people/most people don't bother to stop the vax queue. So when they want to print from the Rainbow they just set the switch to the Rainbow postion and posibly forget to set it back to the VAX position when they are finished printing. So any print jobs that are queued to that printer are lost. Does anyone know of a way for the VAX to automatically detect or check to see if there is really a printer out there before sending the file to be printed? John MacMillan Atomic Energy of Canada Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment Pinawa, MB, Canada R0E 1L0 (204) 753-2311 ext. 2539
carl@CITHEX.CALTECH.EDU.UUCP (07/04/86)
VMS normally DOES check for the presence of the printer, and prints messages on the console telling you the printer is offline when an attempt is made to print to a device that's not connected. If you are really talking about a printer (and not a terminal), then you've probably done something like shorted several of the wires coming out of the vax to make it think the printer's always on-line, and need to reverse this. If it's over a terminal interface, you have to set the terminal /MODEM and use the appropriate pins (as I recall, they are 4, 6, 8, and/or 20) to do hardware handshaking.