OS2 World Community Forum
OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Hardware => Topic started by: beregond on June 04, 2024, 12:12:05 am
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Hello all! I need to get a new printer/scanner, envisaging a color laser one. Which models do you recommend? Any to avoid?
Kindly,
Anders S.
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I have two Brother laser printers because my house has 4 levels and the two printers save me constantly running up and down stairs.
The main printer is a Brother DCP9020cdw and the other one is a HL3170cdw. Both are connected to the network which means they are available from any computer in the house.
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I use separated printer/scanner since I've got a scanner out of work included with a printer.
The scanner I use and I'm very satisfied by it due it is small and very fast with high output quality, one pass does recto + verso if needed and I put the output scanned on my server which is Arca/OS, Windows available. Of course, usb connection is available too.
Brother scanner ADS-1600W (USB + WIFI - wifi usefull when used by ArcaOS due the scanner will put the doc into the destination folder)
Note: the new Brother product replacing this one -> ADS-1800W
As laser color printer (dual mode rj45, wifi and usb), may be -> LEXMARK C3426dw
Brother laser printers are very nice too
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I've got a 10 yr old Brother color HL-3070CW printer which is great with OS/2 & Arca. For Scanner I use wife's Epson ET-2760, but if you just need a scanner might be easier to get a separate one.
Matt W
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Hello Matt
I've got a 10 yr old Brother color HL-3070CW printer which is great with OS/2 & Arca. For Scanner I use wife's Epson ET-2760, but if you just need a scanner might be easier to get a separate one.
Matt W
Can you please share with me how do you use the Epson Scanner with ArcaOS? USB or Wifi?
What driver and software are you using?
I have an Epson L4150 Printer and I want to try if I can use the scanner with ArcaOS.
Regards
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My Brother DCP9020cdw allows me to produce either JPG images or PDF files without problems, couple that with the fact it will also make multi page PDFs makes it a very handy office multi function unit.
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Hi Martin
Looking at sane supported scanners I see the ecotank l3160 is supported by current sane release http://www.sane-project.org/sane-mfgs.html#Z-EPSON man page http://www.sane-project.org/man/sane-escl.5.html
So, looks like you may have to wait until current sane release - 1.3.1 - is ported to see if the l4150 will also work...
Regards
Pete
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Hi Martin
Looking at sane supported scanners I see the ecotank l3160 is supported by current sane release http://www.sane-project.org/sane-mfgs.html#Z-EPSON man page http://www.sane-project.org/man/sane-escl.5.html
So, looks like you may have to wait until current sane release - 1.3.1 - is ported to see if the l4150 will also work...
Regards
Pete
Personally I've no need for sane since a long time. Both my Brother MFC-J6957DW and my HP Officejet X476dw scan to SMB shares. At least the Brother to ftp too. I usually store some scan profiles to some of my computers including my wifes one. Works with our Samba. Didn't test on Linux until now. Both are connected via Ethernet cause they are used by different systems and I really dislike and avoid USB when possible.
On both you can set all the scan settings (pdf/jpeg/resolution/dublex/.....) on the local display or you can use the web interface. The web interface works with our old SM. Never wanna go back again playing with sane/Tame/... or such.
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Thanks for all advice! The Brother DCP9020cdw sounded good, but it does not seem to be on sale any longer. I am told that its successor is Brother DCP-L3560cdw. Do you think I can expect that to work well with ArcaOS?
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Whether you go for a combination m/c (printer+scanner+toaster+whatever) is up to you. I favour keeping major functions in separate boxes, so I don't lose everything when part of the combo goes wrong.
I don't print much. One course I find works well is to focus on the control language used by the printer. My w/p software, WordStar, has a printer driver to output Hewlett Packard's PCL (Printer Control Language) but, being from around 1989, it's version II (Roman 2, that is). My printer is an ageing HP BI2800 (<=A3 paper/card, inkjet) that understands PCL-VI, a superset of PCL-II which accepts WS's output perfectly via a cable. I expect HP will stick to this strategy (if they survive as a company); and maybe other manufacturers do the same, whether they make inkjet, laser or some other system..
Just a thought.
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Thanks for all advice! The Brother DCP9020cdw sounded good, but it does not seem to be on sale any longer. I am told that its successor is Brother DCP-L3560cdw. Do you think I can expect that to work well with ArcaOS?
It has linux cups drivers !
To check if these cups drivers are compatible with ArcaOS (cups)
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If I am reading the specifications for the DCP-L3560cdw correctly it has built in support for postscript (BR-Script3) which means that CUPS is not required. All that is needed is the ppd file and Alex's PSPRINT driver - that is all I use with both of my Brother printers.
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Thanks again! Ivan, I think I understood from another thread that it is also necessary to 'clean' the ppd?
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Hi beregond
The tool - cleanppd.cmd - to clean the ppd file is found in [BootDrive]:\sys\install\PRNDRV\PMDD_6\cleanppd.cmd
Probably worth reading the section of the readme file describing use [BootDrive]:\sys\install\PRNDRV\PMDD_6\readme
Regards
Pete
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If you use the Manage Printers GUI then there's no need to clean the PPD manually - just select Import PPD from the menu and it will handle all of that automatically.
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If you use the Manage Printers GUI then there's no need to clean the PPD manually - just select Import PPD from the menu and it will handle all of that automatically.
Does it import more than one ppd files too? I've tried to import at least 4 ppds for different printers in the lasts 20 years. Most of them with the IBM cli tools before your versions come up. I'm thinking about if it's worth starting from scratch again.
Btw. I've sometimes still the problem with your psndrv (?) that it takes very long until the page came out. Sometimes pages are printed only after a reboot. Also I can't still print with small margins (less than 12,xmm). Although one of my printers allow 4-5mm the other can print without any margin on the other system. Maybe my setup is mess up hence the question to the expert on this topic :-).
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As a matter of interest I have imported both of my printers ppd so I assume that you can import more if necessary.
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Does it import more than one ppd files too? I've tried to import at least 4 ppds for different printers in the lasts 20 years. Most of them with the IBM cli tools before your versions come up. I'm thinking about if it's worth starting from scratch again.
Sure, you can import more than one PPD. Every PPD you import is saved in \sys\install\prndrv\ppd_xx and kept whenever a new import is done.
Btw. I've sometimes still the problem with your psndrv (?) that it takes very long until the page came out. Sometimes pages are printed only after a reboot. Also I can't still print with small margins (less than 12,xmm). Although one of my printers allow 4-5mm the other can print without any margin on the other system. Maybe my setup is mess up hence the question to the expert on this topic :-).
Margin capabilities are defined by the PPD. Laser printers as a rule have a minimum margin size. Only certain inkjets can do margin-less printing TTBOMK.
Performance could be caused by any number of things. The first thing I'd check is whether the IBM PSCRIPT driver behaves the same.
One thing to try is reducing the print job size by tweaking the font download settings (this is highly dependent on what type of job you are printing so there's no set rule for it; try printing to file and comparing the file sizes with different settings).
If the printer's Postscript emulation is simply slow, you could also try printing as image (some apps like Lucide have a setting for this).
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So, I now have the DCP-L3560cdw. If I understand this, the Linux ppd is inside an rpm-file. How do I extract it?
As for CUPS, I do not see that printer in the list. Is there an update I would need?
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For importing into OS/2 (pscript or psprint) then it's generally better to use the Windows PPD instead of the Linux one. You should be able to find it somewhere on the driver disk or from the manufacturer's website.
As noted earlier, you shouldn't really need CUPS just to print from traditional OS/2 applications. However, you would need CUPS to print from applications that don't support the native OS/2 print system (like most of those written in Qt).
To get the printer supported in CUPS it's normally a matter of finding out which CUPS driver package supports it (there are several), and installing that. (Or you could just select a generic Postscript printer as the CUPS model, if you don't need model-specific features.)