Connecting a Mitsubishi color printer to RISC/6000
ITEM: RTA000073910
Question: Connecting a Mitsubishi Printer to the RISC/6000
One of our RISC/6000 agents has been using for several months
(with success) a Mitsubishi printer model S340-10, attached
to RISC/6000. They have written a graphic application which
generates an "RGB" file which the printer understands. The
file consists of a short header with a few escape sequences,
followed by the list of RGB values for the pixels to be
printed, followed by a trailer with a few escape sequences
to end the job.
They connect the printer to the PARALLEL port, configure
it as an "other parallel printer", and print via "enq".
Now, they have bought a new model for the Mitsubishi printer:
model S3410-30. The thing doesn't work anymore: when they
print via "enq", the file gets printed, but the output contains
"stripes" in which the colors are wrong. In other words, the picture
is correct, but contains stripes of incorrect colors. It looks
like some bits get "lost" in the RGB values, so that the pixels
have an incorrect value/color.
They tried to use the splp command to make sure there are no
control codes sent to the printer, but nothing changed.
Mitsubishi does not give any device driver with the new printer,
and says that it should be configured the same as the old
model was. On other Unix machines everything works OK with both
the new and the old model.
Do you have any experience/suggestions on this
topic? Thanx a lot in advance.
ANSWER
Configuring a new "unsupported" printer always involves some trial and
error, but I have a few suggestions in your case. First of all, I am
assuming the following in your situation:
1. You also have this new printer attached on the parallel port.
2. You are still using "enq" to try to print to the new printer.
3. Since you haven't mentioned any customizing of your virtual printer,
I must assume that you have taken the defaults.
You should understand that the "splp" command only has an effect if you
are redirecting your file directly to the printer device (for example
cat FILENAME > /dev/lp0). It does not have an effect if you are using the
queueing system to print (using "enq"). If you are using the queueing
system, splp is automatically set to "passthru" mode, meaning it just
the device driver flows all data directly through to the printer, without
trying to interpret it. Therefore, in your case, if you want to continue
using enq to print, you must do your customization at the virtual printer
level.
In my experience in a case like this, there are 3 virtual printer para-
meters to start with. Since this is a specialized device, for which your
application is generating all its needed control codes, you don't want
AIX to be putting any of its own codes in as well to confuse the issue.
I suggest you change your virtual printer (with smit chvirprt) for the
following attributes:
1. _d=p (sets datastream to passthru - flows data straight to printer
without trying to interpret it).
2. _j=¢ (disables AIX initialization of the printer - otherwise AIX
sends a series of escape codes at beginning of job, which
could be causing problems).
3. _J=¢ (disables AIX restoring the printer at end of job - otherwise
AIX sends another series of escapes codes at the end of each
job).
If this doesn't have satisfactory results, you will probably want to
capture your print output in a file, after it has been through the AIX
print formatter, and look at what is inside. This can be accomplished by
changing the "backend" for your print queue to be the name of a shell
script, which has the following lines:
#¢/bin/ksh
/usr/lpd/piobe $* | /bin/cat > /tmp/print.out
You would have to compare this "print.out" file with one generated
straight out of the application that hasn't been through the print
spooler to see any differences.
S e a r c h - k e y w o r d s:
COLOR PRINTER VIRTUAL PRINTER ESCAPE PASSTHRU
WWQA: ITEM: RTA000073910 ITEM: RTA000073910
Dated: 01/1995 Category: ITSAI6000GE
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