[Info-vax] DCPS v2.7 problem with HP P2055dn printer

[Richard B. Gilbert]

Paul Anderson wrote:
> In article <6N6dnZDF-o5k8tbWnZ2dnUVZ_qCdnZ2d at supernews.com>,
>  Alan Frisbie <Frisbie_REMOVE at Flying-Disk.com> wrote:
> 
>> On the plus side, I found that a Lexmark E250dn works fine with DCPS 
>> as long as I set its personality to Postscript only.   It too has 
>> some failings, however.   For instance, its MediaType entry for plain 
>> paper is "Plain Paper" instead of simply "Plain". However, since I am 
>> using it for labels only, that's OK here.
> 
> Values for Media Type are not hard-coded in DCPS, unlike values for 
> Paper Size or Tray Name.  This for exactly the reason you 
> discovered--the names often vary between printers.
> 
>> It fills the bill for a dirt-cheap Postscript printer, but the user 
>> interface sucks dead rats through a straw.   To set it up, you have 
>> to hook it to your network and let it get an IP address via DHCP.   
>> Then you have to figure out *which* address it got, and use its 
>> built-in web server on port 80 to re-configure it to a fixed IP.   
>> You cannot do this from the front panel.
> 
> This is one of the pains in setting up a printer with no front panel.  
> It's odd that a printer with a front panel would make you use the 
> printer's web page to change the IP address.  But it's something that's 
> not done too often, so maybe the coordination between the printer and 
> its network interface was too much work for Lexmark.
> 
> Lexmark printers have a history of working well with DCPS, supported or 
> not.
> 

I had to set up one HP printer for VMS and TCP/IP ca. 1998.  At the time 
this had to be done from the printer's control panel.  Entering the IP 
address and subnet mask from the printer's front panel took me 30-40 
minutes!

A couple of years later I could use JetDirect Software and do the whole 
job from a PC in a minute or two!