[Info-vax] OT: DEClaser 5100 printer, ways to connect without Appletalk

[Paul Anderson]

In article <00515224$0$9537$c3e8da3 at news.astraweb.com>,
 JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> wrote:

> Apple is discontinuing Appletalk support for printers. (damned you !).

Please explain.  Is this in Snow Leopard, perhaps?  Certainly an OpenVMS 
system currently printing to a printer via AppleTalk will not care a 
whit.

> So, I will have to fire up my old mac so I can fire up the old NPMANAGE
> application to talk to the printer to configure it.

Yup.

> Does anyone know what protocols the ethernet card for that laser printer
> supports ?  I know it does LAT and Appletalk.

It does IP too, but...

> Does it support raw IP ? Is it bidirectional ?

...the port (as someone pointed out, 10001 I believe) is the raw socket 
port but it's unidirectional and can't be used with DCPS.  Now the DCPS 
System Manager's Guide says the printer doesn't support LPD either.  The 
DEClaser 3500 (LN14) does do LPD but you need to specify the internal 
queue name PORT1.

I seem to recall that of the LN09 and LN14, one of them did Raw TCP and 
one did LPD, but the DCPS documentation contradicts that.

> I seem to recall it supported some microsoft thing as well. How
> functional is that protocol, and how dangerous is it to enable it ?

Microsoft thing.  Do you mean DLC/LLC?  I always had that enabled on 
printers in the DCPS lab but never used it.  Certainly DCPS or anything 
on OpenVMS had no use for it.

The DEClaser 5100 was introduced at the very beginning of supporting 
TCP/IP on Digital brand printers, did not do it so well and was hard to 
configure, except with the most excellent NPMANAGE on a Mac.

Paul