OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Setup & Installation => Topic started by: ivan on November 25, 2017, 09:21:20 pm

Title: Printer advice.
Post by: ivan on November 25, 2017, 09:21:20 pm
I have been trying to get my Brother HL-3150CDW network laser printer to work with OS/2 and ArcaOS (at the moment if I want to print I send the print jobs through an XP VM).

There are a set of Linux drivers available for both CUPS and LPR but so far I have not been able to get either of them to work directly.  CUPS says it has created the necessary settings but has never produced a print, not even the test print.

I assume that I have missed some step in the process but having tried several times with slightly different results obtained depending on how I put the Linux drivers relative to the PPD but the final result is the same - no print.

Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated.

Edit:
I forgot to add that I put together a Linux box and it prints with CUPS from there.
Title: Re: Printer advice.
Post by: Per E. Johannessen on November 26, 2017, 12:16:34 am
I set up newer HP-lasers to use SLPR and one of the PS3 drivers supplied with eCS/AOS.
(Haven't had the need to try Cups yet.)
No experience with Brother but it seems to support PostScript3.
Title: Re: Printer advice.
Post by: Joseph M. Kempf on November 26, 2017, 01:12:46 am
Brothers' MFC-L8850CDW, a multifunction color printer, scanner and fax machine, has worked well for me under eCS 2.2 beta II and Arca Noae  (eCS for many a year).  Brother provides an excellent PScript 3 driver that works well when imported into eCS and Arca Noae.   One may print to it wirelessly using SLPR.  One can print in color and in duplex.  MFC-L8850CDW's scanner can be operated via a browser.  I have never used the fax function.
Title: Re: Printer advice.
Post by: ak120 on November 26, 2017, 02:19:44 am
I have been trying to get my Brother HL-3150CDW network laser printer to work with OS/2 and ArcaOS (at the moment if I want to print I send the print jobs through an XP VM).
So you have already a workaround.

Quote
There are a set of Linux drivers available for both CUPS and LPR but so far I have not been able to get either of them to work directly.  CUPS says it has created the necessary settings but has never produced a print, not even the test print.
It's the same GS filter for both - binary only for x86 linux. So you should check compatibility with your Linux.

Quote
Edit:
I forgot to add that I put together a Linux box and it prints with CUPS from there.
You can create virtual PS queue on this box (and activate LPR client support) to use it for OS/2 clients or whatever. The client systems no longer need a model specific printer driver and can use a standard PS printer driver. The whole CUPS garbage under OS/2 can be thrown away and will no longer be required at all. And also DOS/Win-OS/2 applications will print again using the Adobe PS Printer Driver or similar solutions. A trendy solution would be a Port driver using the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) to communicate natively with CUPS on Linux. For only one network segment CUPS is overkill, almost every UNIX operator would prefer the LPR(NG) way.
Title: Re: Printer advice.
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on December 05, 2017, 10:37:18 pm
I have been trying to get my Brother HL-3150CDW network laser printer to work with OS/2 and ArcaOS (at the moment if I want to print I send the print jobs through an XP VM)...

I took a quick peek at the Brother printer specs page, I thought it maybe a younger sibliing to my HL-5470DW I have here. However, I do not see PS support anywhere on your model, and the Brother page does say "Emulations - GDI (host based)", which I believe means the majority of work is done by the printer drivers on the OS.

If you think this is not correct let me know, I'm happy to share how my Brother printer is setup. It works here, a couple specific things are not supported or cause error with the PSCRIPT and PSPRINT drivers, so I just avoid these.
Title: Re: Printer advice.
Post by: ivan on December 06, 2017, 10:32:56 am
Hi Dariusz,

I changed that for the HL-3170CDW which does have the BrScript 3 emulation (postscript 3) and now I have to get it working over the wired network here at home.

Any help you can give will be gratefully accepted.
Title: Re: Printer advice.
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on December 06, 2017, 03:22:51 pm
Hi ivan,

...I changed that for the HL-3170CDW which does have the BrScript 3 emulation (postscript 3) and now I have to get it working over the wired network here at home....

OK, that's great news, you should be able to get this thing up and running pretty quick, although I'm not sure about the handling of the colour given that my 5470DW is a B&W laser only.

So here are the setups I currently have in-place, all these relate to the Printer=>Properties window:

1) OUTPUT PORT (field names below match the dialog-box you will see)
LPD server = static IP I assigned to my printer
LPD printer = BINARY_P1

Port name = SLPR1
Print Timeout = 60 secs

Performance = LPRPORTD Compatible (I was never able to get the 'High Performance' setup working)

2) PRINTER DRIVER
2i  => PSCRIPT
I used the IBM PSCRIPT v 30.800 driver here, but first I imported the 5470DW PPD file into that driver. This allowed me to have the various printer specific features available in the printer driver. This is also where I ran into some problems, especially around the print resolution. For example, trying to use HQ1200 always caused PSCRIPT driver to crash. So by default, I have my printer set to 1200. I simply like my high-quality print and using 600 just doesn't appeal.

2ii => PSPRINT
I also setup the PSPRINT driver, similar setups to PSCRIPT, my goal here was to find out if the changes Alex included in PSPRINT would create a better result. This, amongs other things, allows your print jobs to include fonts (support for embedded TrueType fonts) with each output.

I did not see much difference, as a result, I am using the IBM PSCRIPT driver nearly 100% of the time.

OK, so the above is the general, somewhat high-level review. Search for 'HL-5470DW' in the forum posts and you will find the detailed description of what I did to import the PPD driver. No sense repeating that here again, if you do not find it let me know.

The only other thing I would add is: if you are going to setup the Cloud printing option, make sure you supply a DNS entry in the printer setups. I missed this and that was a PITA...of course each device which connects to the network needs this, and I've done this many times, yet somehow when it came to the printer I missed that step...LOL!
Title: Re: Printer advice.
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on December 06, 2017, 03:49:55 pm
I don't know if the original poster has problems with Manage Printers or with Cups, but on both of these, defects cause them to crash rather than configure my printer. Both products work just fine with my printer on eComStation.

I reported the Manage Printers bug, and various defects were fixed on both the front end in Manage Printers and on the back end in Cups. I don't think any of these fixes have been released at this point.

With the fixes, I can print LPR, but Cups still crashes. Printing is so intricate under the covers that I have not had time to file a bug report. What is a little scary is that the close examination of my Cups support shows that support for my printer is kind of broken, even on Macintosh. Sure enough, there are problems there, too. Oddly, IOS seems to get the printer right every time.

People want printing to be simple, but expressing the printer capabilities in a PPD offers plenty of room for errors. I don't know how to find errors in the PPD, nor do I have any idea how to report an error in Cups. Even if I did, what are the chances of getting a bug fix during the printer's lifetime? What I'd really like is some interactive program to query the printer and construct/test the PPD.

We are definitely ready for a replacement for Cups.

I appreciate that many printers do work on ArcaOS. I'm hoping that for the 5.02 release, my printer (HP M252dw) will be supported for LPR.
Title: Re: Printer advice.
Post by: ak120 on December 06, 2017, 04:33:12 pm
I changed that for the HL-3170CDW
The required PPD file is well hidden. But it could be made available for OS/2 following this four simple steps:
Title: Re: Printer advice.
Post by: ivan on December 06, 2017, 05:19:09 pm
Thanks Dariusz and Andreas,

I used the  Y12E_C1-ps-32-120-en.EXE to extract the ppd and changed  LanguageEncoding to *LanguageEncoding: OS2-850 which I think is the correct value (see attachment).

Now to have fun with pin.exe which I haven't used for years and see if everything works as expected but that is a project for tomorrow.


Title: Re: Printer advice.
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on December 06, 2017, 06:10:56 pm
...Now to have fun with pin.exe which I haven't used for years and see if everything works as expected but that is a project for tomorrow...

Yeah, PIN was pretty good to work with...just read the docs. I went through this process repeatedly as I attempted to identify what was killing my PSCRIPT drivers.

Previously I had a Brother HL-1650 Postscript printer, so if anything that made it a tad easier trying to decipher the PPD formatting.

I've attached the HL-1650, the OEM HL-5470DW and the modified HL-5470DW PPDs in case you want somethign to look at. I also included the official 'PostScript Printer Description File Format Specification, v4.3' PDF, this really helped with understanding of the PPD encodings.
Title: Re: Printer advice.
Post by: ak120 on December 06, 2017, 08:20:06 pm
Thanks Dariusz and Andreas,

I used the  Y12E_C1-ps-32-120-en.EXE to extract the ppd and changed  LanguageEncoding to *LanguageEncoding: OS2-850 which I think is the correct value (see attachment).
But your attachment downloaded from here has a different encoding. Please check if your ppd text file extracted from the Windows drivers uses codepage 850 or 1252. Under Windows you should translate cp1252 text files to cp858 before enabling this setting.
Title: Re: Printer advice.
Post by: roberto on December 06, 2017, 09:49:13 pm
  • Download the file Y12E_C1-ps-32-120-de.EXE from Brother's support site (100K)
I have a question, why did you decide to advise a windows driver? Instead of using a linux ppd.
I have always had better results with linux ppd
saludos
Title: Re: Printer advice.
Post by: ak120 on December 06, 2017, 10:48:35 pm
  • Download the file Y12E_C1-ps-32-120-de.EXE from Brother's support site (100K)
I have a question, why did you decide to advise a windows driver? Instead of using a linux ppd.
Sorry, but a PostScript Printer Description is not a Windows driver. The strange packaging by some vendors is not my fault. Further it's quite simple, you don't have take to care of line breaks and a wrong codepage of the text file. And it has already the right "LanguageEncoding: OS2-850" btw.

-----removed-----
Title: Re: Printer advice.
Post by: ak120 on December 07, 2017, 01:54:34 am
Sorry for the confusion, now I see what you have done with the PPD. I didn't made a statement to change the file's content. The original PPD file is in ANSI codepage 1252 and should be converted to OEM codepage 858 or 850. You can use the editor of FC/2 or a similar tool for this task.
Here the french ppd file converted to CP850 - I hope this webserver will not change the codepage inside a zip archive. Uploading plain text files for this topic is a lead balloon.
Title: Re: Printer advice.
Post by: ivan on December 07, 2017, 11:27:18 am
Installed the ppd I extracted to both PSPRINT and PSCRIPT on my old OS/2 Warp machine, pulled a printer template and filled in the necessary information and port and it prints in full colour without any problems.

I ended up doing the same on ArcaOS because the 'Install Printer' in the 'Printers' folder only wanted to install a cups printer for some strange reason.  Doing it manually now allows me to print from there as well.

I tried both the IBM PSCRIPT driver and the PSPRINT from Alex.  Comparing both there is no apparent difference in output so I have decided on using tthe PSPRINT driver because of its ability to embed TT fonts.

Thanks to all for your help.
Title: Re: Printer advice.
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on December 07, 2017, 04:12:29 pm
Installed the ppd I extracted to both PSPRINT and PSCRIPT on my old OS/2 Warp machine, pulled a printer template and filled in the necessary information and port and it prints in full colour without any problems....

NICE!!!

...I tried both the IBM PSCRIPT driver and the PSPRINT from Alex.  Comparing both there is no apparent difference in output so I have decided on using tthe PSPRINT driver because of its ability to embed TT fonts....

I think the idea of PSPRINT is a pretty good one, but of course depending on how many of the fonts you use are actually built-in to your particular printer the result may or may not be resounding.

In my case, when I specifically used fonts that are not built-in I found that the print jobs themselves got so much bigger (especially on docs which were a combination of different fonts but just a single page or a couple of pages only) that it occasionally took a while for the printer to render the job. Now this could be just a matter of printer engine capability, etc, etc...but in the end I stuck with the IBM PSCRIPT to just keep things moving smoothly.

Keep in mind, my printing is for home printing pursposes, very little fancy fonts, etc, etc...no business presentations here!
Title: Re: Printer advice.
Post by: roberto on December 07, 2017, 04:18:35 pm
People want printing to be simple, but expressing the printer capabilities in a PPD offers plenty of room for errors.
100% ok

Quote
I don't know how to find errors in the PPD,
You can use cupstestppd.exe for test the ppd in cups. The problem in psprint, is that you can write him a love letter, and tell him it's a ppd, and he accepts it and also tells you that everything is correct. I have tried.

Quote
nor do I have any idea how to report an error in Cups.
You can see var\log\cups\log...
But I've been trying to launch a gci printer, and I'm not capable. The problem here is that you can not see the log, until you deactivate cups daemond.

Quote
Even if I did, what are the chances of getting a bug fix during the printer's lifetime? What I'd really like is some interactive program to query the printer and construct/test the PPD.
Yes, I wont too.

saludos
Title: Re: Printer advice.
Post by: Pete on December 07, 2017, 06:43:53 pm
Hi roberto

You could use cleanppd.cmd to prepare a ppd file for installing in psprint/pscript.drv - cleanppd is part of the psprint package and is installed in [BootDrive]:\sys\install\PRNDRV\PMDD_6 on ArcaOS systems.

You should be able to open the cups error log by selecting Administration -> View Error Log in the cups browser interface without stopping cupsd. Errors should be reported either on the eCUPS wiki http://trac.netlabs.org/ecups/report or the rpm ports wiki http://trac.netlabs.org/ports/report depending on whether you are using eCUPS or the rpm packaged cups.


Regards

Pete

Title: Re: Printer advice.
Post by: roberto on December 07, 2017, 10:37:55 pm
Thanks Pete, your comments have helped me a lot. For me this of cups, it is very complex, but I keep trying, thank goodness that it is not a printer of work but of emergencies. It seems that sometimes to use cups you need the stars to be aligned.
saludos