Gary Anderson (ganderson@ganderson-ppp.clark.net)
Sun, 13 Sep 1998 00:15:58 -0400 (EDT)
Hello !
Just a quick rundown of my system: RH-5.0, 2.0.33 kernel, patched
w/parport for that kernel, running samba (gives the other (win98) machine
in the house access to the linux box and for file/printer sharing). lp0 is
my HP-692C inkjet, lp1 is my Panasonic KX-P2123 dot matrix printer. Also
have a laser printer attached to the win98 machine, shared back to the
Linux box, and working nicely (once I found out I had to turn off header
pages to get it to work at all !). lp0 is on 0x378, lp1 is on 0x278, both
ports set for EPP (lp0 set in bios, lp1 hardware set on the card (new
single parallel port card - no other function, by the way))
Okay - symptoms:
Can print TEXT from the linux box to the Panasonic just fine. (i.e. the
Linux printtool ascii page, as well as text files, print out as they
should).
Any attempt to print GRAPHICS to the Panasonic, from either the Linux box,
or the win98 box results in very sporadic, erratic behavior. Only twice
has the full RedHat postscript test page printed, and that was -ugly-.
The vertical frame lines around the test image skewed badly to the left
from top to bottom, and postscript text was chopped up noticeably in
places. I never could get the microsoft test page to print back
completely to the Panasonic. Most of the time, that's what also happened
when I tried the RH postscript test page from the Linux box, it would not
print out completely. Usually got only about 1 - 1.5" printed at the top.
Now here's a strange twist, and one I've not seen with a dot matrix
before:
When graphics printouts failed, it would lock the matrix printer up. I
could not even turn the platten. Which indicates to me the motor was
being left engaged somehow. None of the buttons (i.e. LF, FF, FUNCTION)
on the front panel would work. I -could- take the printer OFFLINE, but it
would not return to an online state. I had to lprm the printjob, and turn
the printer off/on to regain use.
Dropping back to a 2.0.33 stock kernel cured all the above problems with
that printer.
I know ... the effort right now is going into the 'bleeding edge' parport
kernel (2.1.x) work. If any of you have the same (or similar) Panasonic
printer, and you're working with the bleeding-edge, it might be worth
checking out, unless, of course, this is a problem found / fixed long ago
and I'm just coming to the party late. In which case, just disregard all
after 'Hello'. :-)
Why am I bothering with parport, you ask ? I also have, on the lp0 port,
an HP 5100C scanner which I'm looking forward to using w/Linux, and
helping out with testing the new epst code when it becomes available. It
looks like the 2.2 kernel is pretty close to fruition, so I'll be
upgrading to that when it comes out.
Gary
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Wed 30 Dec 1998 - 10:18:17 EST