#74 IBM Proprinter X24 doesn't print FreeBSD PostScript sample

[Anonymous]

My email address is:
rkfrancis1@yahoo.com

You asked for a Detailed Description so here goes:

On FreeBSD 6.0 I am able to print the handbook lptest
text using Samba 3 smbprint (with the staircase effect)
to my IBM Proprinter X24 connected to the Windows XP
Pro box.
When I tried to print the handbook sample PostScript
file it just printed the text, so it's not a PostScript
printer.

So I installed foomatic-rip and tried to print the
handbook sample PostScript file and the printer started
form feeding a lot of pages so I had to shut it off.

I checked my PPD and I think it is the correct one
(IBM-ProPrinterII-ibmpro.ppd).

In taking a look at foomatic-rip and the PPD itself, I
saw that it was using something like:
"gs -q -dBATCH -dPARANOIDSAFER -dQUIET -dNOPA&&
USE -sDEVICE=ibmpro%A%Z -sOutputFile=- -"

so I tried changing the output file to a real file name
and the input file to the sample PostScript file.

I thought the resulting file was a binary data file and
that's why it wouldn't print right. To be sure I
printed the Windows test page to a file, and it
appeared to be a binary data file too. In fact they
looked similar.

I was able to get the enTref.pdf documentation from
Lexmark, and some more documentation on PPDS from:
http://undocprint.printassociates.com/formats/page_description_languages/proprinter

and using that I was able to read the binary data files.

The main difference seemed to be that the Windows test
page was using the 1B 5B 67 command and the gs output
was using the 1B 2A 03 command. The latter command is
not documented in the enTref.pdf document.

I tried replacing the 1B 2A 03 commands with the 1B 5B
67 commands (which aren't an exact replacement, I'm
leaving out some detail here but I did replace them
correctly) but it didn't work when I tried to copy it
to the lpt1 on the Windows box using:
copy /b gstest.prn lpt1:

and maybe I did something wrong. So I installed a
Proprinter II in Windows and printed a test page to a
file and saw it was using the 1B 5A command. So I mass
replaced the gs output 1B 2A 03 commands with 1B 5A
commands and copied that to the printer directly as per
above and it worked (I think). At least I got what I
saw in Windows gsview.

My conclusion is that maybe, the IBM Proprinter X24
doesn't understand the 1B 2A 03 command.

In the undocprint documentation it says that 1B 2A is
ESC * (Select graphic mode). I don't know what the 03
is, but it looks like it's part of the command. If you
have any better documentation send it to me or send me
a link:
rkfrancis1@yahoo.com

Thanks (you deserve it for reading this far!)
Rob