hpoj-devel

[hpoj-devel] HP OfficeJet G85 and PLC5

[Jens L. <jen...@go...>]

Hi,

recently I bought a new WLAN router, which has an integrated printserver
(US Robotics USR029108). The printserver simply does not work although
everything else is normal, i.e. no error messages or strange behaviour.
After some discussions with the US Robotics support they suppose that
the problem is that the printer (a HP OfficeJet G85) only supports PLC3,
but the printserver needs support for PLC5. Is there anything I can do
about that, i.e. are there any updates for the printer? Or is there any
other solution?

I'd be glad to get some help, because I didn't actually find a lot of
useful information about this topic, so I thought it might be a good
idea to ask the experts. :-)

Currently I use hpoj 0.91 on Debian 3.1 and have no printing problems
except the one described above. (I know that there is hplip, but as long
as the printserver does not work I still use the parallel port.)

Jens

Re: [hpoj-devel] HP OfficeJet G85 and PLC5

[Till K. <til...@gm...>]

Jens Lehmann wrote:
> Currently I use hpoj 0.91 on Debian 3.1 and have no printing problems
> except the one described above. (I know that there is hplip, but as long
> as the printserver does not work I still use the parallel port.)

HPOJ is not supported any more by HP and by most distributions. Please
upgrade to HPLIP from your distro or from http://hpinkjet.sf.net/  If
your problem still persists after completely removing HPOJ and setting
up HPLIP, please post here.

   Till

[hpoj-devel] Re: HP OfficeJet G85 and PLC5

[Jens L. <jen...@go...>]

Till Kamppeter wrote:
> Jens Lehmann wrote:
> 
>>Currently I use hpoj 0.91 on Debian 3.1 and have no printing problems
>>except the one described above. (I know that there is hplip, but as long
>>as the printserver does not work I still use the parallel port.)
> 
> 
> HPOJ is not supported any more by HP and by most distributions. Please
> upgrade to HPLIP from your distro or from http://hpinkjet.sf.net/  If
> your problem still persists after completely removing HPOJ and setting
> up HPLIP, please post here.

I upgraded to HPLIP. I was able to succesfully set up my printer if I
connect it by USB cable with my PC. Of course the problem I described
persists. If I understand correctly I somehow need to update the
firmware of the printer to make it PCL5 capable. Is this possible? And
if yes: how can it be done?

Jens

[hpoj-devel] Re: HP OfficeJet G85 and PLC5

[Till K. <til...@gm...>]

Jens Lehmann wrote:
> 
> Till Kamppeter wrote:
> 
>>Jens Lehmann wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Currently I use hpoj 0.91 on Debian 3.1 and have no printing problems
>>>except the one described above. (I know that there is hplip, but as long
>>>as the printserver does not work I still use the parallel port.)
>>
>>
>>HPOJ is not supported any more by HP and by most distributions. Please
>>upgrade to HPLIP from your distro or from http://hpinkjet.sf.net/  If
>>your problem still persists after completely removing HPOJ and setting
>>up HPLIP, please post here.
> 
> 
> I upgraded to HPLIP. I was able to succesfully set up my printer if I
> connect it by USB cable with my PC. Of course the problem I described
> persists. If I understand correctly I somehow need to update the
> firmware of the printer to make it PCL5 capable. Is this possible? And
> if yes: how can it be done?
> 
> Jens
> 
> 

I do not know about a firmware update to PCL5 for any HP inkjet. Print
servers do not need such a thing AFAIK. If you have a printer driver
which makes the printer printing on USB, the same driver will make it
printing through a print server.

To make the extra functions of HPLIP (scanning, ink level check, ...)
working via an external print server, you will probably need an original
HP JetDirect box.

   Till

Re: [hpoj-devel] Re: HP OfficeJet G85 and PLC5

[Johannes M. <js...@su...>]

Hello,

On Apr 21 10:19 Till Kamppeter wrote (shortened):
> If you have a printer driver which makes the printer printing on USB,
> the same driver will make it printing through a print server.

Provided that the particular printer also works without
bidirectional communication.
I don't know if the OfficeJet G85 works even without
bidirectional communication.

> To make the extra functions of HPLIP (scanning, ink level check, ...)
> working via an external print server, you will probably need an original
> HP JetDirect box.

This is an interesting question.

It should work with an original HP built-in network card for exactly
the particular model (something which HP sometimes calls "LIO")
if the model is listed as "Network(1): Yes" at
http://hplip.sourceforge.net/supported_devices/inkjet_aio.html
which reads:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Network support indicates built-in ethernet and/or wireless networking. 
Alternatively, many devices may be operated on the network using an
external JetDirect print server. Not all network configurations are
supported. Please refer to the HPLIP FAQs for more information. 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
and
http://hplip.sourceforge.net/faqs.html
reads
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Question: Does HPLIP support networked printers?
Answer: Yes, HPLIP supports printers that are directly network
connected (via a built-in Ethernet port) or connected to a network
via a JetDirect. Printers that are shared via a Windows share and
SAMBA are not supported (you can, however, print to devices shared
with SAMBA using CUPS, the smb: backend and HPIJS). Printers that
are shared via CUPS from another Linux PC on a network are supported
by HPIJS (but not HPLIP). Status information for printers shared in 
this way is not available. 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
but I don't find an explicite statement regarding "scanning"
via built-in HP ethernet port or via HP JetDirect printserver box
or via any non-HP printserver box.

I don't know, if a USB-only HP all-in-one device would work
via any kind of external printserver box.

I would appreciate some info from HP regarding printers and
all-in-one devices with external non-JetDirect print server boxes
and some information which exact devices do not belong to the class
of "many devices may be operated on the network using an external
JetDirect print server".


Kind Regards
Johannes Meixner
-- 
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstrasse 5      Mail: js...@su...
90409 Nuernberg, Germany                    WWW: http://www.suse.de/

[hpoj-devel] Re: HP OfficeJet G85 and PLC5

[Jens L. <jen...@go...>]

Till Kamppeter wrote:
> Jens Lehmann wrote:
> 
>>Till Kamppeter wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Jens Lehmann wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Currently I use hpoj 0.91 on Debian 3.1 and have no printing problems
>>>>except the one described above. (I know that there is hplip, but as long
>>>>as the printserver does not work I still use the parallel port.)
>>>
>>>
>>>HPOJ is not supported any more by HP and by most distributions. Please
>>>upgrade to HPLIP from your distro or from http://hpinkjet.sf.net/  If
>>>your problem still persists after completely removing HPOJ and setting
>>>up HPLIP, please post here.
>>
>>
>>I upgraded to HPLIP. I was able to succesfully set up my printer if I
>>connect it by USB cable with my PC. Of course the problem I described
>>persists. If I understand correctly I somehow need to update the
>>firmware of the printer to make it PCL5 capable. Is this possible? And
>>if yes: how can it be done?
>>
> I do not know about a firmware update to PCL5 for any HP inkjet. Print
> servers do not need such a thing AFAIK. If you have a printer driver
> which makes the printer printing on USB, the same driver will make it
> printing through a print server.

That's what I thought, too. After all the print server should do nothing
more than directing everything it gets to the printer. However the US
Robotics support told me that the printer needs to support PCL5. All I
do is to print to http://192.168.1.1:1631/printers/hp via IPP. It would
probably require a firmware change in the router to make it working.

> To make the extra functions of HPLIP (scanning, ink level check, ...)
> working via an external print server, you will probably need an original
> HP JetDirect box.

Correct. All bidirectional features won't work (although I see no strict
reason why they could not work if the firmware of the router would allow
traffic in both directions). However that's not a big problem since I
rarely use these features and if I need them I can always locally
connect a PC to the printer.

Another question: Assuming I had a JetDirect print server, could I just
connect it to the router via Ethernet cable and then print from the PCs
on the local network?

Jens

[hpoj-devel] Re: HP OfficeJet G85 and PLC5

[Till K. <til...@gm...>]

Jens Lehmann wrote:
> 
> Another question: Assuming I had a JetDirect print server, could I just
> connect it to the router via Ethernet cable and then print from the PCs
> on the local network?
> 

Yes, and you will be able to use the bi-directional features via the
network, too.

   Till