[Info-vax] New HP LaserJet Pro printers on VMS kicking blank pages

[Rich Jordan]

We have had decent luck with more recent HP printers on our VMS systems at customer sites when they had to replace older units (in this case a 4100).  All of our apps were designed around the PCL5 printing language and have font requirements that mean printers that support at least the full font set from a Laserjet 4 series printer.   We found out the hard way that just PCL5 or 5e support was not enough when HP put out a series of crippled printers that only supported a subset of the full PCL5/5e font set.   LaserJet Pro series units nearly all have been good replacements.  They work with both port 9100 (Jetdirect/raw telnet) printing and LPR/LPD.

But today I've got a new LaserJet Pro M454dw replacing a LaserJet 2430 (which worked great until it died) and it is persistently kicking out a leading blank page.  We have docs going back decades on how to fix this problem, even some using Pathworks-related reset modules in the device control library for the queue, and variations of the TCPIP$TELNETSYM_SUPPRESS_FORMFEEDS logicals either globally or flipped on temporarily when the queue is started.   Absolutely nothing has worked.  We plugged an M277 printer in, no blank page.  This is using port 9100 printing; we are going to test LPR/LPD and possibly IPP shortly.

Has anyone else had issues or good luck getting a current model LaserJet Pro to work cleanly under VMS using port 9100 printing?