Re: Need help with CUPS printing
Paul E Condon wrote:
> I'm running Jessie, as close to plain vanilla as my hardware allows.
> I have a HP Laserjet 5MP. This is an ancient device. It has built-in
> firmware for Level 2 Postscript printing and a special socket for
> Apple Localtalk connection, but no USB. It is a sturdy old beast and
> was running nicely until quite recently. But in a special configuration
> that needs to be understood in order to give help:
>
> My main desktop computer on which I receive email, and create my own
> documents has *only* USB. I bought a special cable that has a USB to
> Centronics conversion dongle at one end. But I can't use it because the
> socket for Centronics on the printer is in recessed place in the
> printer where the dongle won't fit and I can't enlarge the place
> without sawing away parts of the printer framework that are necessary
> for the paper feed system to work. So, instead, I put into service an
> old micro-mini Dell (now running Jessie) and put CUPS on it, and
> configured it to be a print server. But all this was well before I had
> any idea that there would ever be anything like Jessie in my
> future. At first, after some fiddling, the print server worked under
> Jessie, but now it has stopped working. The printer continues to
> produce test pages when requesting them from the old Dell keyboard and
> in self-test mode by pushing buttons on the printer itself, not by
> typing at the computer keyboard.
>
> After installing the most recent upgrades to Jessie on both computers
> this morning, I tried to print a few pages from iceweasel and printing
> worked. But I also want to be able to print from Emacs, which I use to
> compose my emails, such as this one. Emacs told be that there was no
> default printer even though I had just selected the printer on the old
> Dell from a pick-list presented to be by the print user interface
> presented to me by the Emacs user interface. I think I should configure
> the Cups server on my desktop computer to indicate that that printer
> over on the old Dell is the one for Emacs. But how do I do that?
>
> I can't trust my own investigations to determine if there have been any
> recent changes in the Jessie CUPS packages in the recent past. I know
> there was a new version of CUPS at the time that Jessie entered
> pre-release freeze, and I pretty sure my system was working then and not
> something that I lost in my transition from Wheezy. And, of course, I'd
> like a more foreword looking suggestion than to re-install Wheezy. I'd
> like this fixed before Jessie release because I have a bad feeling that
> the longer I wait the further from the main-stream I will be. I need, with
> my old hardware, to be as close to the middle of the herd of users as I
> can be.
>
> The print driver for the HPLj-5MP that I have been using in recent years
> is the one with (recommended) in its listing in the pick-list of all HP
> print drivers in the localhost:631 web site on both computers. Beyond that
> I can't think of anything people might need to know about my set-up. I'd
> be glad to answer any questions about things that I haven't realized might
> be important.
>
> Please help
>
Hi
long mails are not easy to read and understand. Most important is the
quality of information in it ... like model number or chipset in the
hardware you use etc.
I had similar experience with usb2parallel cable. Actually I am using 2 old
printers with 2 different cables. The one does not have an issue. The other
does and since upgrade to wheezy and later to jessie. I had to fix the same
issue for the worse cable, where the chip does not communicate the proper
port to the system. The solution was to update printers.conf manually and
put there
DeviceURI parallel:/dev/usb/lp0
or whatever port your cable is using
For the other issue how - that you can not connect the cable to the
printer - use parallel port cable extention.
I hope this helps
regards
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