rds95@leah.Albany.Edu (Robert Seals) (09/20/89)
Hello, I have posted this question twice in comp.lang.postscript over the past year or so, and nobody has said a word, so I'm widening the newgroups in hopes of hearing SOMETHING. Our DEC ScriptPrinter (LN03R) periodically goes to lunch. I believe it is caused by the Micrographix PS driver for Microsoft Windows, but I can't really be sure. The symptoms are that the printer will selectively print or not print jobs based on some unknown criteria, and small jobs seem to have better luck than larger. Then, somehow, it will come back, and everything will be fine. I figure that the 'persistent parameters' get changed nastily, because cycling the power has no affect. Jobs that work fine one day won't the next. It's terribly frustrating. So far, my only recourse (sp?) has been to be patient until it gets better. I am seriously considering taking out the PS board and looking for a battery to remove...but there's so many wires back there it's more than I look forward to. Has anybody seen ANYTHING like this? Please? The printer gets a lot of use from our vax and pcs, and my users (and myself) are getting fed up. Any comment at all would be appreciated. Except, "Never saw thet before." rob
dkk@athena.mit.edu (David K Krikorian) (09/20/89)
In article <2034@leah.Albany.Edu> rds95@leah.Albany.Edu (Robert Seals) writes: > >Our DEC ScriptPrinter (LN03R) periodically goes to lunch. I believe >it is caused by the Micrographix PS driver for Microsoft Windows, >but I can't really be sure. ...[symptoms]... > >Has anybody seen ANYTHING like this? Please? The printer gets a lot of >use from our vax and pcs, and my users (and myself) are getting fed up. > >Any comment at all would be appreciated. Except, "Never saw thet before." > Sorry, but I never saw that before. Seriously, I think you're on the right track suspecting your PostScript driver (or printer driver, if you have the same one on all the troublesome printers). (What hardware do you have the printers hooked up to?) The systems I administer have (I'd guess) 75 LN03R's hooked up to DEC hardware in various configurations. We drive them into the ground. Literally. It's truly amazing what those printers will take, and keep on printing. (We have about 10,000 users.) The only problems we have are normal wear on the hardware (even though we run them at an order of magnitude beyond spec.). I understand your desire to downgrade them as a short-term solution for your problem, but isn't that a bit drastic? Is changing the software an option? Hooking up one LN03R in a different configuration than the others (if you haven't yet)? David Krikorian / MIT Project Athena Operations / Systems Programmer
jnp@mjolner.tele.nokia.fi (J|rgen N|rgaard) (10/01/89)
(Our configuration: DEC ScriptPrinter (LN03R) connected to UNIXes and VAXes through a LAT (?) - something that can be used for printer- connections. Gating from UNIXes goes via a DECStation) I've experienced something similar: When printing certain types of files the printer dies with 'ioerror' (the exact position in the file can be moved by inserting/removing comments) or 'syntaxerror' (at places where there (verifiable) are no syntax-errors (looks like a part of the input "disappears" so that f.ex. strings are seen as commands). If the file is split into smaller parts they *always* print; the split is purely textual, so eventuel PostScript errors would not go away. Both the printer and the server (this LAT thing) claim to be using XON/XOFF, no parity and same number of databits. -- -- -- | Regards, J|rgen N|rgaard ('|' is '\o{}' in \LaTeX{}) | | e-mail: jnp@tele.nokia.fi or pedersen%tnclus.dnet@tele.nokia.fi | -- telephone: <..>-358-0-511-5671 --