Author Topic: HP Printer support  (Read 5136 times)

Neil Waldhauer

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HP Printer support
« on: October 11, 2019, 03:48:15 pm »
The support in Cups for HP printers has been very good. But it's getting stale. If I look at printers in retail outlets or on-line, I'm no longer seeing support.

I'm looking at two consumer-grade color laser printers. These printers are cheap to buy, but expensive to buy new toner, which is appropriate for a home or business with modest printing needs.

The HP printer driver is called hplip, and we have version 3.17.11-1 at Netlabs, which can be installed by RPM/YUM.

My old M252dw has been replaced by M254dw, and needs 3.18.5 or later. The slightly fancier M454dw needs 3.19.6 or later.

I don't know how difficult it is to port the hplip software, but supporting at least one brand of printer is strategic, and HP is at least commonly sold in USA. They are also good at recycling used toner cartridges.
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ivan

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Re: HP Printer support
« Reply #1 on: October 11, 2019, 04:28:46 pm »
Neil, you need to be aware that HP is changing from 'below cost' printers and 'sky high' priced ink and toner to something more realistic.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/09/hp_supplies/

I, and friends, gave up on HP printers years ago and moved to Brother laser units because it is much easier to get them working with OS/2 and ArcaOS and doesn't require running anything other than an updated PSPRINT with the printer ppd.

xynixme

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Re: HP Printer support
« Reply #2 on: October 11, 2019, 04:31:31 pm »
supporting at least one brand of printer is strategic, and HP is at least commonly sold in USA.

Presumably not only in the USA. Mine's a HP too, but with a classic parallel port (and matching port replicators) to avoid your issues.

Either way I'd support the concept of limiting the number of supported brands/models/types. Let's say 3 notebooks, 3 desktops and 3 servers per brand, with a choice of 3 "co-operative" brands (cheap, less cheap, professional). Renewed once in a while. That may be better than trying, but failing, to support *.* perfectly.

You may have to fund bww for now, but selecting a HP color printer for home users seems perfectly reasonable to me. We already cannot go to a random shop to buy random hardware, so it'll be a strategic choice to restrict ourselves to a few printers of a few brands. Like HP, which makes sense indeed. Even if I don't need your specific software solution.

Doug Bissett

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Re: HP Printer support
« Reply #3 on: October 11, 2019, 05:25:37 pm »
Quote
The support in Cups for HP printers has been very good. But it's getting stale. If I look at printers in retail outlets or on-line, I'm no longer seeing support.

It has always been my experience, that HP printers are very backward compatible. Using an older CUPS driver, will usually work, although it may not support the latest, and greatest, little bell that they added. Eventually, somebody will get around to updating HPLIP, but even if they don't, it is likely that the printer will still work. I can't say that about other brands that I have used (but that was many years ago).

Quote
I, and friends, gave up on HP printers years ago and moved to Brother laser units because it is much easier to get them working with OS/2 and ArcaOS and doesn't require running anything other than an updated PSPRINT with the printer ppd.

I have an old Brother laser printer. It works fine with CUPS, and the BRLASER package. That is available from the Arca Noae subscription repository. The biggest "problem" with that printer, is the real estate that it takes up. It is about twice the size of most home printers, and, it is not color.

Silvan Scherrer

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Re: HP Printer support
« Reply #4 on: October 11, 2019, 05:57:56 pm »
The support in Cups for HP printers has been very good. But it's getting stale. If I look at printers in retail outlets or on-line, I'm no longer seeing support.

I'm looking at two consumer-grade color laser printers. These printers are cheap to buy, but expensive to buy new toner, which is appropriate for a home or business with modest printing needs.

The HP printer driver is called hplip, and we have version 3.17.11-1 at Netlabs, which can be installed by RPM/YUM.

My old M252dw has been replaced by M254dw, and needs 3.18.5 or later. The slightly fancier M454dw needs 3.19.6 or later.

I don't know how difficult it is to port the hplip software, but supporting at least one brand of printer is strategic, and HP is at least commonly sold in USA. They are also good at recycling used toner cartridges.
we have 3.19.8 in exp repo :) I did that some days ago.
gutenprint is also updated in exp and cups-filters is in the process.

regards
Silvan
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Pete

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Re: HP Printer support
« Reply #5 on: October 12, 2019, 05:01:00 pm »
Hi All

If you need HP scanner support it is fairly easily added despite not being available in RPM packages. From the HPscan readme.txt:-

If using cups/hplip installed from *RPM* packages:

sane is required - http://smedley.id.au/tmp/sane-backends-1.0.27-os2-20190321.zip

hpaio.dll is required - http://smedley.id.au/tmp/hpaio-3.19.5-os2-20190609.zip
  1] Unzip the hpaio.dll file to [PathTo\]sane\lib\sane\hpaio
  2] Unzip the models.dat file to /usr/share/hplip/data/models/models.dat

Locate the already installed hplip.conf file and copy to the %ETC% directory
 - usually [BootDrive]:\MPTN\ETC and modify paths as necessary.


When scanning the sane command line uses a URI rather than a conf file name and starts like this:-

   scanimage -d hpaio:/net/envy_photo_6200_series?ip=192.168.1.252
 


Regards

Pete