Re: [hpoj-devel] 1150C back for more

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

Gregory Allan wrote:
> My main problem is that more often than not, sending a job to the 
> printer results in nothing happening.  But I found an odd way to 
> prime the printer and get it working.
> 
> If I send a job to the printer and it doesn't work, I can open Win98 
> under Win4Lin, run the "HP OfficeJet Pro Toolbox", go to "Product 
> Services" and select "Test Product Communication".  Sometimes the 
> test succeeds the first time, sometimes not.  Either way, the printer 
> now (95% of the time, anyway) prints the prior job.  Kind of like I 
> had to shake it a bit to wake it up :-).
Hi, Gregory.  If you have Win4Lin running at the same time as ptal-mlcd,
you're asking for trouble, even if only Win4Lin's kernel modules are
loaded (one of which might tickle the parallel port) without actually
having Windows loaded.

> Obviously something is happening here that I ought to be able to 
> duplicate without the help of Windows.
Does ptal-mlcd report any error messages to syslog (probably
/var/log/messages) when "nothing happens" when you try to print?
When you get into this state, it would also be interesting to run
the "basic device connectivity" tests suggested in the hpoj
documentation.  In particular, run "ptal-connect <devname> -service ECHO",
type several lines of text, and see if they get echoed back to you.
Also, try running "ptal-hp <devname> device".  (Substitute for "<devname>"
the actual PTAL device name for your device, such as "mlc:par:0").

David