[comp.laser-printers] QMS-PS 810; fixing timeout errors

alexande@drivax.UUCP (Mark Alexander) (05/25/88)

This is a belated thank-you to those kind people who responded for my
request for information on the QMS-PS 810 printer.  We did buy one,
and it works fine, most of the time.  The only problem it has is that
occasionally when it's powered up in the morning, the processor
appears to be in a coma.  It never prints the startup page, and
doesn't accept data (it's always busy).  This may be my fault; I've
got the computer plugged into a different wall outlet, so maybe
there's a grounding problem.  The problem disappers if I power it up
before the computer, or disconnect the cable first.

Other than that it works fine.  It's like a faster Apple LW.  The
parallel port makes downloads from the PC/AT very fast.  The pages
still can't be pumped out much faster than the Apple, but the 16 MHz
processor makes computation time on complicated pages (like that
Escher fish program) MUCH faster. 

 * * *

Somebody in this newsgroup (or maybe in comp.lang.postscript) was
having troubles with timeout errors on their QMS PS-??? printer.  I
was having this on the PS-810, and finally tracked it down.  If there
are any extraneous characters after the Control-D (\004) that
terminates the print job, such as a newline, the printer thinks that a
new job is coming in.  You can tell that the printer is expecting more
data because the ACTIVE light will be double-blinking.  Getting rid of
the extra characters at the end of the PostScript file fixes the
timeout problem.
-- 
Mark Alexander	(UUCP: amdahl!drivax!alexande)
"Bob-ism: the Faith that changes to meet YOUR needs." --Bob (as heard on PHC)