Thank you to everyone who responded to my request for help, this is truly a
great group of people.
Before I post the summary, let me tell you a little about the HP LaserJet
1012 printer. The printer is a USB printer without a parallel port. After
not being able to get the computer to recognize the printer, I contacted
Varian and was told the following:
"At this point USB printer is not supported in vnmr or vnmrJ. The
/dev/term/a and /dev/term/b are the serial ports, and /dev/ecpp0 is the
parallel port."
After telling me that, I was given a reference to a very brief
article/discussion to read about USB printers. The article is located out
on the user portion of the Varian site. Please see the very end of this
e-mail if you would like to read the article.
So, to make a long story short, rather than try to fight with the printer, I
swapped it out for an HP LaserJet 6L and as soon as I plugged the 6L in, it
printed.
Following are the helpful responses I received:
****
I don't know if a LaserJet 1012 will work, but I'm using a LaserJet 6,
which is an older model of HP LaserJet.
****
It has been my experience that essentially any HP or HP like (brother,
lexmark, xerox? ) will work. I have replaced problem printers with HP color
inkjet printer also in an emergency without making any configuration
changes. That was on Solaris 2.6/VNMR 6.1C
****
Almost any printer that accepts postscript or PCL will work.
****
I have a HPLJ 1300 with the parallel adapter on our 400.
****
It should work. It is use HP PCL printer language. You can just chose the
LaserJet_300R in /vnmr/devicenames. Another way to do it is that use
ghostscript filter in unix to configure it as a postscript printer, then
chose PS_AR in vnmr printer setup.
****
I am not familiar with HP LaserJet 1012. But I struggled with several new
HP LaserJet printers earlier this year, including LaserJet 2300, with
printing with Solaris system and VNMR. It seems that the interface of the
parallel port had changed in the last 2 years which caused the difficulty.
By accident, I found that if you add a "parallel autoswitch" in between the
computer and the LaserJet 2300, the autoswitch seems to collect the signal
correctly and the printer will then work. This switch was made for 2
computers to share a printer. But you don't need to connect it to 2
computers. Staples sell the 2-port parallel switch by Belkin for $12.99. I
feel that this method may work with other new models of HP printers, but
have no experience. If you wish to read my original posting at AMMRL, it is
at <
http://chemnmr.colorado.edu/ammrl/archives/March-2004/45.html>
http://chemnmr.colorado.edu/ammrl/archives/March-2004/45.html
****
I have a Lexmark E321 LaserJet Printer on the Inova-400. It works very
well.
This printer is less than $300.00.
****
Varian Article (Varian NMR News 2003-02-25)
USB Printers?
Sun's Blade workstations are equipped with a USB bus, keyboard and mouse are
now connected via USB bus. One might be tempted to try using a printer
through the USB interface; however, note that
* /vnmr/bin/adddevices so far does not support the USB interface;
support is present in bin/makePrinter from the on-line user library,
however,
* USB is not just a different serial interface! USB is a bus structure,
and using USB devices requires a software driver that recognizes the
particular devices on the bus. Sun are supporting a very limited range of
printers and related peripherals, such as one model by Brother, Epson, GCC,
and Xerox each, plus 8 models by Lexmark (including the Optra Color 45) and
the HP DeskJet 970cxi. Among these, we only expect the DeskJet 970cxi and
the Lexmark Optra Color 45 to work with VNMR (provided you use makePrinter).
Sun also supports selected USB-to-parallel converters, such as the Belkin
F5U002. From discussions with Sun we get the impression that Sun only
support printers that are either connected through a USB-to-parallel
converter, or printers which use such a converter internally. Do not expect
printers with a "native" USB port (such as the HP LaserJet 2200d) to work
(except possibly through one of the bus converters mentioned by Sun, using
the printer's parallel port).
Do not rush to order USB-based printers! Greg May (Varian) hooked up an HP
DeskJet 970cxi, and it was recognized immediately (you could tell by the
appearance of a file /dev/usb/printer0). Greg then used adddevices to set up
a plotter of type "DeskJet_300R" on a serial port, then he used the printer
admintool to change the port to /dev/usb/printer0 - and plotting from VNMR
worked just fine. This is the only printer we have seen working using the
USB directly so far. The USB port of the HP LaserJet 2200d can definitely
not be used - this was confirmed by Günter Hirtz (Varian Germany).
On the other hand, Günter has successfully tested a HP LaserJet 2200dn on a
Sun Blade 100 by using a Belkin F5U002 USB-to-parallel adapter; for the
setup he used the latest version of bin/makePrinter from the on-line user
library, see the article below. Günter tested PCL and PostScript printing,
as well as PCL, HP/GL and PostScript plotting and didn't observe any
problems whatsoever. A locally purchased USB-to-parallel converter not
mentioned by Sun (see above) did not work: if you don't want to risk
failures, only try devices that are reported to be OK with Sun/Solaris.
Many thanks to Günter Hirtz and Greg May for providing this information!
User Library: bin/makePrinter Updated Again
(by Günter Hirtz, Varian)
An updated version (8.5) of bin/makePrinter is now available from the
on-line user library. This latest version provides better USB support (see
the article above): as soon as a USB printer (such as the HP DeskJet 970cxi)
or a USB-to-parallel converter supported by Sun / Solaris (such as the
Belkin F5U002) is plugged in, makePrinter now recognizes the new device
entry /dev/usb/printer0 and offers "USB" as a printer port option. No extra
software is needed on the Sun (other than Solaris 8 10/00 or higher).
The new version also features additional documentation. It supports the
Solaris releases 2.6 up to 9, runs under VNMR 6.1B / VNMR 6.1C and is also
fully compliant with VnmrJ 1.1B: once makePrinter is installed, the VnmrJ
1.1B administration environment (vnmrj adm) calls makePrinter rather than
the adddevices utility for setting up printers & plotters. This switch-over
is done because makePrinter and adddevices must not be used in parallel, as
this would cause conflicts in the printer setup (both in VNMR 6.1 and in
VnmrJ). If after installing bin/makePrinter you prefer switching back to the
adddevices utility, you can use the uninstall tool that comes with
bin/makePrinter: this will revert the system to the previous / standard
adddevices functionality and setup.
Received on Wed Nov 10 2004 - 18:17:24 MST