[Info-vax] DCPS V2.7 and Brother printers

[Scott Dorsey]

Alan Frisbie  <Usenet03_REMOVE at Flying-Disk.com> wrote:
>On 03/24/2019 10:38 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>
>> Because you bought a cheap printer with no postscript support?
>
>The printer *does* have Postscript, which works nicely with Linux
>and Windoze.   I can also generate a Postscript file on the VMS system,
>ftp it to the Windoze box, and print it from there.  I would simply
>like to cut out the middleman and use it with DCPS.

What if you telnet into port 9100 and pipe the ps file into it?  Does the
printer print?

Does the printer answer on port 515 if you try to telnet into there?

>> Just fix the 4100.  What is it doing?  Is it jamming and in need of
>> new rollers, or has the clutch started sticking and causing blank pages
>> at the end of jobs?
>
>If it were just that, I could have fixed it with the spares I had.
>But it started showing error messages that indicated, I believe,
>the formatter board.   I replaced the indicated board, but the same
>error persisted.   At that point it became less expensive to simply
>replace the printer.   I specifically got a Postscript model with
>the expectation that it would have a good chance of working with DCPS.

What was the error?  The formatter board (which is really all the compute
power) seldom fails on these printers.  Many of the errors that you think
would indicate a bad formatter actually are power supply issues or the
network card.  Will the printer start up and print a test page with the
network card removed?

>It's a shame, because I really liked the HP 4xxx series, once some
>of the early firmware bugs had been fixed.  But when the indicated
>fix doesn't work, and the users (wife) are screaming for a working
>printer, next day delivery from Newegg trumps all.

The 4100 was really the last good small-office printer that HP made.  They
are easy to work on and very modular.  If you are junking yours, give it
to someone that does printer repairs because someone will want the clutch.
--scott 
-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."