Author Topic: Unexeptable printer speed.  (Read 19161 times)

Silvan Scherrer

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Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
« Reply #15 on: June 25, 2015, 06:10:39 pm »
I have installed the latest USB-drivers from ArcaNoae. and I now also have set up a network printer and am using the same driver as for the USB connection. The output port is SLPR1 (is that correct?). Anyway I can print using the network, but the speed is the same as with USB connection.
Hmm SLPR sounds like parallelport. Network is usually a LPD.

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Silvan
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Per E. Johannessen

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Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
« Reply #16 on: June 25, 2015, 06:17:44 pm »
SLPR port is for network and I would have tried that with a ps-driver.

(http://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php?topic=771.msg7272#msg7272)

ivan

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Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
« Reply #17 on: June 25, 2015, 08:06:38 pm »
Hi Einar,

Being a fairly quiet night last night I was able to have a good read of the printer manual. 

Two things stood out, no Linux drivers and no detailed specifications.  I did manage to find the specifications on the Epson site where they mention 20 ppm single side and 10 ppm double side measured by the ISO standard.  It is noted that these speeds are for windows drivers and that OSx does not have all the features and may not (read will not) get those speeds.

I then went on to look at the print technology used.  It needs quite a lot of processor power and memory just to run the heads and that assumes that the PS and PCL emulation software supplies the page image in exactly the way the print head software expects to see it (this is why there are no Linux drivers and OSx has some problems).

This brings me back to the fact this printer is a sophisticated winprinter, while it will print postscript and PCL it is going to be very slow if anyone uses anything other than windows.

It appears that it is the win drivers that do the the multiple page preparation and send each page to the printer as soon as its buffer is empty.  I have been, so far, unable to find a service manual for the printer which would usually give more information about the printer firmware and what the onboard processor actually does and where it stores all of its font information (HD???).

I don't think you are going to see very much of a speed increase, if any, by changing how it is connected to your computer. USB, WiFi, network cable will all transfer faster than the printer can handle what it considers as non standard input which it then has to convert for use by the print engine.
     

Einar Lygre

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Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
« Reply #18 on: June 29, 2015, 10:15:23 pm »
Thank you Ivan for all your efforts.

This printer has enough memory: 197 MB Ram and 360 MB hard disk. Rom is 5 MB. That means that the printer normally will not run out of memory.
The printing speed itself is about as in Win8. That means that the time from the start of printing of one page till the end of printing of the same page is about the same. It is the time BETWEEN the pages and copies that is the problem.
I print PS-files directly whit good quality in eCS by using right mouse button and select print. But I can't select to print more than one copy. I should like to try to do the same in Win8, but there isn't any right mouse button selection for printing. It is removed. I have to try to find out how I can do that and see if there is a difference between eCS and Win 8.

Alex Taylor

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Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
« Reply #19 on: June 30, 2015, 01:29:11 pm »
Does this slow job problem only happen with Lucide?  What about printing from other applications?

Lucide uses a rather unorthodox printing mechanism which is not how most OS/2 programs do things.

Andy Willis

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Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
« Reply #20 on: June 30, 2015, 11:31:28 pm »
I have installed the latest USB-drivers from ArcaNoae. and I now also have set up a network printer and am using the same driver as for the USB connection. The output port is SLPR1 (is that correct?). Anyway I can print using the network, but the speed is the same as with USB connection.
Hmm SLPR sounds like parallelport. Network is usually a LPD.
regards
Silvan
SLPR is old now but is newer than LPD... I've been using it for network printers for many years and as I recall much easier than LPD to setup.  There is a setting that could affect speed, it uses the newer high speed or LPD compatible which is slower but the one that normally works from what I have found. 

Einar Lygre

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Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
« Reply #21 on: July 01, 2015, 11:55:14 pm »
Yes Alex.
It looks like  the problem only happen with Lucide. It was difficult to find out because I have one document, produced with Scribus, that I ought to print out in 100 copies. Scribus produce a PDF file that gave me all the trouble. Printing it from Win 8 was a dream.
I now have printed an ODT document from OpenOffice 4.  Very good. I then exported the same document as a PDF file and printed it from Lucide. That was an other story. Lucide printed one copy and then told me that the printer was offline - every time, and that was not true. I therefor couldn't really measure the time between copies. But the time between each page was much longer than when printing from OO. There is also a problem with Lucide that it is impossible to set the correct margins, it selects its own. Therefor the question now is if I should install CUPS and use another PDF program/viewer.

The HELP text for SLPR Port settings has a lot of options for communicating with a printer, but most of those fields are not in the ports properties setting. Some of them should boost the performance, but is not available.
In OS2 we have the option to print a file directly by using the right mouse button while pointing at the file. I can then print a Post Script file directly and the result is very good. But there is a problem, I don't have the option to print more than one copy. That is a pity.

guzzi

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Re: Unexeptable printer speed.
« Reply #22 on: July 02, 2015, 06:53:15 pm »
It might be a good idea to use qpdfview instead of Lucide. Lucide is no longer being maintained.