kennel@minnie.cognet.ucla.edu (Matthew Kennel) (06/30/89)
I'm having problems trying to print out postscript files on an Apple Laserwriter IINT. The printer is connected to an Apollo 4000 workstation (running SR10.1) through a serial line. Symptoms: Typically, the light on the printer starts flashing, as if its receiving data, but nothing comes out and the light flashes on to eternity (or power-cycle). Usually, after I power-cycle (so light stops flashing), the _first_ document that is sent comes out OK---but then the light never stops flashing and documents after that never ever come out. Success is better when I'm trying to print a plain text file (made by enscript), and worse whenever it has graphics in it, (e.g. enscript -G or simple postscript graphics). I've futzed with the termcap until my face is blue---right now, it pipes all the output through a program of mine which directly opens up the serial port and stuffs the characters through. For the most part, I don't even bother with the queueing and just stuff the output myself, with either "cat" or my program. I also have another program in another window that listening to the serial port. Apparently the LWII is squawking back some error message. This is what it says when it gets into its light-flashing-but-no-go-mode: ****begin transcript %%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%% %%[ Error: undefined; OffendingCommand ]%% ****end transcript... In fact, it repeats those two lines over and over about every second and nothing. Like Jason, nothing save a total-power-down will ever get it to stop. What, exactly is the "end-of-file"? Looking through the red Adobe manual it appears that for the original Laserwriter, it's a ^D, but, I can send ^D's up the wazzo and it never ever seems to do anything. I also tried sending ^D's right after each document, but that seemed to make things worse---but I'm not sure. But I am sure that when it gets into that loop, ^D's never ever break it out. Do I need newlines, or what? I haven't been able to reproduce exactly what causes it to go into this mode, but it sure happens sooner or later---and mostly sooner. Indeed, usually after I sucessfully print out a document, the light keeps on flashing, but my window shows that no error message is coming. Then a few minutes later I get the above error syndrome when I try to send the next document, or even sometimes for no reason at all. By the way, the printer works perfectly when it's connected to a Mac through Appletalk. Can anybody help? Please have mercy on me, I'm a novice Postscript programmer (by necessity only!), Thanks, Matt Kennel kennel@cognet.ucla.edu
warb@faatcrl.UUCP (Dan Warburton) (07/06/89)
In article <73@mara.cognet.ucla.edu> kennel@minnie.cognet.ucla.edu.UUCP (Matthew Kennel) writes: >I'm having problems trying to print out postscript files on an >Apple Laserwriter IINT. The printer is connected to an >Apollo 4000 workstation (running SR10.1) through a serial line. > >Symptoms: Typically, the light on the printer starts flashing, as if its receiving You might have a handshake problem. I think the printer will operate in hardware handshake mode (RTS/CTS) or software (XON/XOFF). I know that when I don't have them set correctly I get similar symptoms. A page or two that fits into the printer buffer than blink..blink..blink..
hess@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Caleb Hess) (07/06/89)
We've had similar problems in the past that were traced to parity or bits/char settings. The end-of-file character is ^D, but if parity or bit count is wrong, it won't be recognized by the printer and will produce yet another error message.