hpoj-devel

Re: [hpoj-devel] ptal-mlcd ECP changes

[<pa...@rc...>]

Joe Piolunek wrote:
> While testing the new CVS today, my 600 locked up occasionally with the 
> "SYSTEM ERROR2252" message displayed. One time ( that I noticed) ptal-hp 
> returned this message: "ptalChannelRead returns 0! Broken pipe". All of the 
> lockups ( 3 times today ) happened while scanning at -res 150. That may be 
> because I made more scan attempts at that resolution. In total I made about 
> 35 scans, at least 5 at each resolution that the 600 supports.
Sorry, I should have been more specific about the problem I was fixing, which
involved getting the following error messages from ptal-mlcd:

lookupChannel(port=0,psid=4,ssid=4): invalid!
sendError(port=0,MLC): error=0x07.
reverseDataReceived(pBdr=0x08068DC0): null TCD!
exClose(reason=0x3007)

I still need to look into those "system errors".

Bob Paddock wrote:
> I've got a OJ710, on the LPT1 parallel port.  I was under the impression that 
> scanning didn't work yet so I never even tried.  What do you want me to try?
First run "cvs update" from the top-level hpoj directory to ensure you have
the latest code and documentation, and rebuild if necessary.  SCAN-HOWTO
should cover what you need to know for scanning.  In your case, you'll want
to follow the "ptal-hp" section at the end, rather than the SANE section at
the beginning.

> Printing has been working fine for me. 
> 
> I just get confused at times because one program refers to the print que as 
> 'lpr', one as 'hpoj', one as 'default printer'.  Use the wrong one with the 
> wrong program and you get nothing printed.  Nothing really to do with th OJ 
> drivers per'se.  Linux could learn a lot from windows in this area...
When you say "program", are you referring to various application programs
you're trying to print from?  lpr is the command used to print something
from the shell command line, and some applications force you to compose
your own lpr line in their "print" dialog box.  The queue name (lpr "-P"
switch) is up to you, and the default printer (if no "-P<queue>" is
specified) is normally the first entry in /etc/printcap.  (I realize this
isn't very intuitive.)

David

Re: [hpoj-devel] ptal-mlcd ECP changes

[<pa...@rc...>]

Joe Piolunek wrote:
> The messages look slightly familiar, but I don't think they have appeared 
> recently. I seem to recall seeing "exClose" appear at stdout. It may have 
> happened only a couple of times.
exClose() is the function that gets called whenever something goes wrong in
the communication with the peripheral.

> Nothing like it is in /var/log/messages.
Nothing will show up there because currently ptal-mlcd doesn't use syslog.
I plan to change that eventually.


Bob Paddock wrote:
> Second scan at -300 came out ok, but it took about 3 minutes to scan it, it 
> was a black and white page, but it was probably still scanned as color since 
> I did change any thing besides adding the -300.
> 
> I loaded up the out.jpg image with KView then my machine started going so 
> slow it was useless, the mouse moved in great leaps and lunges.  Had to cycle 
> power.  Don't know if this is in any way related to scanning, for the moment 
> lets assume that it was not.  The scan did look fine.
A 300dpi JPEG image requires lots of RAM to process, because I think libjpeg
insists on decompressing it into RAM.  A high resolution setting like 300dpi
is overkill for most situations.

> Third scan of b&w page in color with the defaults got me:
> patlChannelRead returns 0!
> Broken Pipe.
It would be helpful to know if ptal-mlcd reported any error messages, because
chances are that something went wrong at that level.

> All pages looked like there where twice as long as they should have been when 
> viewing out.jpg in the viewer.  Last half was a blank gray looking thing, 
> probably scanned the color of the unit it self.
That's a known issue (mentioned briefly in SCAN-HOWTO and in the "Bugs and
TODO" list on the web) with certain models, including yours, where the
device doesn't report the image length.  For now, I put in a kludge where
the length equals twice the width, until I can figure out how to parse the
JPEG-compressed data just enough to count the lines so I can write it into
the JPEG header.  That's why you see the large gray area.

> What I could not figure out how to make it do was scan all of the loaded 
> pages?  Having a autofeed scanner is kind-of useless if you have to manually 
> intervene for each page.  Same complaint I have about the HP710 standard 
> windows software (I would not have bought the thing had I known that up 
> front).
I added an item on the TODO list to work on this before I release 0.8.
For now, you could try writing a script that calls ptal-hp in a loop.  I
neglected to document that ptal-hp has different exit codes depending on
whether the scan was successful and there are (1) or aren't (0) more pages
to scan.  I haven't actually tested this, however, so this functionality
will depend on whether each device properly reports whether a new page is
available.  Also, 2 means that there was no page to begin with, 3 means
command-line syntax error, and 4 means some sort of miscellaneous device
error.

> I do have (x)sane 1.0.4/0.76 loaded on here if you want any thing tested.  I 
> use it with my Epson scanner all of the time.
Currently SANE doesn't support your model.  "ptal-hp scan" is a temporary
scanning solution until I can get around to developing a proper SANE backend
that properly supports all of the models.

> This is my printcap file in its entirety:
> 
> HPOJ:
> 
> just those five chars.
That's really bizarre.  I guess CUPS has different methods of configuring
print queues, and this file only exists for compatibility with programs
that read it to try to find out what print queues are available.  Perhaps
the programs that you had trouble with printing got confused by this
minimalist format, and in the interest of "ease-of-use" and hiding complexity
from the user, neglected to provide a more generic way to print.  (I'm just
guessing here, mind you.)

Most Unix programs print by generating PostScript and sending it to the print
spooler.  Often they have some sort of option to save the PostScript to a
file without actually printing it right away.  That way, if all else fails,
you can just invoke something like "lpr filename.ps" from a shell prompt (or
whatever the CUPS equivalent is to lpr).  I frequently "print to a file"
just so I can inspect the output in ghostview before actually printing.

David

Re: [hpoj-devel] ptal-mlcd ECP changes

[Bob P. <bpa...@cs...>]

> Bob Paddock wrote:
> > Second scan at -300 came out ok, but it took about 3 minutes to scan it,
> > it was a black and white page, but it was probably still scanned as color
> > since I did change any thing besides adding the -300.
> >
> > I loaded up the out.jpg image with KView then my machine started going so
> > slow it was useless, the mouse moved in great leaps and lunges.  Had to
> > cycle power.  Don't know if this is in any way related to scanning, for
> > the moment lets assume that it was not.  The scan did look fine.
>
> A 300dpi JPEG image requires lots of RAM to process, because I think
> libjpeg insists on decompressing it into RAM.  A high resolution setting
> like 300dpi is overkill for most situations.

I tried 300dpi as the OCR software I use seems to prefer it.

> > Third scan of b&w page in color with the defaults got me:
> > patlChannelRead returns 0!
> > Broken Pipe.
>
> It would be helpful to know if ptal-mlcd reported any error messages,
> because chances are that something went wrong at that level.

Where do I look for those at?  Didn't think the syslog stuff was implimented 
yet?

> > All pages looked like there where twice as long as they should have been
> > when viewing out.jpg in the viewer.  Last half was a blank gray looking
> > thing, probably scanned the color of the unit it self.
>
> That's a known issue (mentioned briefly in SCAN-HOWTO and in the "Bugs and
> TODO" list on the web) 

Yes I did see that, just wanted to be thorow in my report.

> I added an item on the TODO list to work on this before I release 0.8.
> For now, you could try writing a script that calls ptal-hp in a loop.  I
> neglected to document that ptal-hp has different exit codes depending on
> whether the scan was successful and there are (1) or aren't (0) more pages
> to scan.

Thank you.

> >
> > HPOJ:
> >
> > just those five chars.
>
> That's really bizarre.  I guess CUPS has different methods of configuring
> print queues, 

CUPS seems to be beast all its own.  Its what I'm use to, is there some thing 
better out there?

> fails, you can just invoke something like "lpr filename.ps" from a shell
> prompt (or whatever the CUPS equivalent is to lpr).

lpr-cups.

Re: [hpoj-devel] ptal-mlcd ECP changes

[<pa...@rc...>]

Bob Paddock wrote in response to me:
> > It would be helpful to know if ptal-mlcd reported any error messages,
> > because chances are that something went wrong at that level.
> 
> Where do I look for those at?  Didn't think the syslog stuff was implimented 
> yet?
Hi, Bob.  If you start ptal-mlcd during your machine's startup sequence,
then ptal-mlcd's messages might be on one of the text-mode consoles.  If you
start ptal-mlcd in a terminal window under X (as I do for development and
testing), then they would be in that window.

Note that as of yesterday's CVS code, ptal-mlcd and ptal-printd both log to
syslog as well as to standard output (whatever that may be).

> CUPS seems to be beast all its own.  Its what I'm use to, is there some thing 
> better out there?
Since I'm not very familiar with CUPS, I don't know if it's better than its
alternatives (plain old lpr/lpd, LPRng, and who knows what else).

David

Re: [hpoj-devel] ptal-mlcd ECP changes

[Joe P. <joe...@sn...>]

On Saturday 02 June 2001 07:22 pm, David Paschal wrote:
<...>
> Sorry, I should have been more specific about the problem I was fixing,
> which involved getting the following error messages from ptal-mlcd:
>
> lookupChannel(port=0,psid=4,ssid=4): invalid!
> sendError(port=0,MLC): error=0x07.
> reverseDataReceived(pBdr=0x08068DC0): null TCD!
> exClose(reason=0x3007)
>

The messages look slightly familiar, but I don't think they have appeared 
recently. I seem to recall seeing "exClose" appear at stdout. It may have 
happened only a couple of times. Nothing like it is in /var/log/messages.

-- 
Joe

Re: [hpoj-devel] ptal-mlcd ECP changes

[Bob P. <bpa...@cs...>]

> Bob Paddock wrote:
> > I've got a OJ710, on the LPT1 parallel port.  I was under the impression
> > that scanning didn't work yet so I never even tried.  What do you want me
> > to try?
>
> First run "cvs update" from the top-level hpoj directory to ensure you have
> the latest code and documentation, and rebuild if necessary.  SCAN-HOWTO
> should cover what you need to know for scanning.  In your case, you'll want
> to follow the "ptal-hp" section at the end, rather than the SANE section at
> the beginning.

I started with a fresh checkout/build rather than the update.

First scan was a color page, the printer test page that I had made not long 
ago.  Came out fine.  Used the defaults.

Second scan at -300 came out ok, but it took about 3 minutes to scan it, it 
was a black and white page, but it was probably still scanned as color since 
I did change any thing besides adding the -300.

I loaded up the out.jpg image with KView then my machine started going so 
slow it was useless, the mouse moved in great leaps and lunges.  Had to cycle 
power.  Don't know if this is in any way related to scanning, for the moment 
lets assume that it was not.  The scan did look fine.

Third scan of b&w page in color with the defaults got me:
patlChannelRead returns 0!
Broken Pipe.

Scanned next page with no problem.

All pages looked like there where twice as long as they should have been when 
viewing out.jpg in the viewer.  Last half was a blank gray looking thing, 
probably scanned the color of the unit it self.

What I could not figure out how to make it do was scan all of the loaded 
pages?  Having a autofeed scanner is kind-of useless if you have to manually 
intervene for each page.  Same complaint I have about the HP710 standard 
windows software (I would not have bought the thing had I known that up 
front).

I do have (x)sane 1.0.4/0.76 loaded on here if you want any thing tested.  I 
use it with my Epson scanner all of the time.

> > Printing has been working fine for me.
> >
> > I just get confused at times because one program refers to the print que
> > as 'lpr', one as 'hpoj', one as 'default printer'.  Use the wrong one
> > with the wrong program and you get nothing printed.  Nothing really to do
> > with th OJ drivers per'se.  Linux could learn a lot from windows in this
> > area...
>
> When you say "program", are you referring to various application programs
> you're trying to print from?

Yes.

Ran in to a new one just after I posted that message last night.  To get Gimp 
to print I had to put in 'lpr-cups', so that gets me to:

lpr
lpr-cups
"default printer"
hpoj

for four different application programs.  A couple of other programs I just 
gave up on and switched to windows to print stuff because I was in a hurry 
and could not figure out the right magic words.


> and the default printer (if no "-P<queue>" is
> specified) is normally the first entry in /etc/printcap.  (I realize this
> isn't very intuitive.)

This is my printcap file in its entirety:

HPOJ:

just those five chars.