Printing to Network Printer?

Can anyone help me get my AmigaOS 4.1 machine printing to a network printer?

The printer in question is a Brother HL-4040CDN color duplexing networked laser. It's on the LAN and talking to the other computers just fine.

It's also PostScript-compatible - I tested it with a plain PostScript driver from another computer - so if I can figure out how to get the Amiga to send output TO it, I should be able to print.

The Samba port says not to even bother trying to use it for printing, so does anyone have any suggestions?

@jbni

You need this:

http://www.os4depot.net/index.php?fun ... utility/print/lpr_dev.lha

Please give us feedback, how does it work with OS4!

Bye!

@jbni

Samba has nothing to do with Net printer : it's Window printer sharing and you are right Amiga Samba does not support this. Probably because AFAIK it requires the local computer to have a corresponding driver for the printer prior to send the data over the network, at least this is how it works here at work...

EDIT: last time I tried it LPR was running fine under OS4

@lazi

Thanks for the tip!

Unfortunatly, I was completely unable to get the HL-4040CDN working with PostScript using either the LPR or RAW protocols.

(I tried it with the PostScript driver on my Mac, and it wouldn't work over those protocols either. Bummer.)

However! I also have a Brother HL-5250DN duplexing monochrome networked laser, and THAT happily accepts PostScript over those protocols!

I'm having some issues with margins (since there are about three places they can be set!) but basically:

I installed lpr.device per the instructions.

I set the Printer preferences to parallel.device and the PostScript printer driver.

I set the PostScript printer preferences to 600 dpi and moved all the margins out to something closer to what my printer can handle (I went with a .20 margin all around and it's working well so far).

Some caveats: Printing can be really slow. The printer spits out pages rapidly enough, but AmiPDF has to think for almost a minute per page at 600x600 DPI.

Printing text from MultiView was quick - it started printing immediatly.

The greyscale dithering kinda sucks but that might be AmiPDF itself.

And I have no idea how to enable the duplexer from AmigaOS.

A potential downer: Using OWB, I can load the printer's web page - it has a built in server to let you control print options and see how much toner you have left, etc - but I can't see or change the settings because the password window never opens.

Using IBrowse that came with AmigaOS 4.1 I can log into the printer - but making changes doesn't work (clicking the Apply button does nothing.)

If I was able to log into the printer and make changes via the web browser, I could enable duplexing that way. (I logged into it from my Mac and set the printer to duplex by default and then the Amiga's output printed double-sided okay, but I can't find a way to enable it from the Amiga itself.)

So on the whole I've got print working alright, but unless I can find a web browser that'll let me work the printer's page, it might not be an ideal OS 4.1 printer.


UPDATE: I got PageStream 3.4beta9 up and running and that prints much faster and with much better greyscale dithering than AmiPDF, so apparently the speed and quality issues were a matter of the app, not the printer.

@jbni

Looking at Brother USA I can't see HL4040cdn to be a Postscript compatible printer, maybe this is your problem ?
Oh and I also found that your other printer is not a PostScript printer either but instead a "BR-Script 3" printer which seems to be some sort of cut down Brother specific version of extended PostScript, that might explain your poor results.
Try using an HP Laser driver as it seems your printers both support PCL...

@jbni

Quote:
OWB doesn't support HTTP authentication (yet?). But as described here it might be possible to use the trick of embedding the username and password in the URL.

Best regards,

Niels

@nbache

Quote:Only with old versions of OWB, passing username:password in the URL to the network library (Curl in case of OWB) without any browser control was disabled in WebKit some weeks ago and this workaround can't be used any more.

@joerg

Been trying to get this to work, but all I get is a sound from the printer. Is there a "Dummies" version of the instructions for someone without the technically knowledge needed?

Thank you

@jbni

You can also try NetPrinter.
It lets you choose the way you want to talk to the printer (lpr, raw) and has an inbuilt spooler (fixed nearly all the problems i had with printing and gs crashing)
Has a nice and easy prefs tool, too

@Raziel

I agree, NetPrinter is more reliable than lpr.device - shame it isn't OS4 native though.
You can also try my ipp.device, most new printers support IPP.

I am jumping on this bandwagon.

I do have Brother DCp-7065DN printer that i want to connect. I will report my findings too.

I tried to connect with lpr.device but mus have done something wrong
echo >prt: "hello printer" tells me there is ni such file


I am going tot test with ipp.device now
edit: 1
Installed it, produced a postscript fiele wit Wordworth
from a shell did
copy myoutput IPP0:
An output window "newlib stdout" appeared
Nothing was printed
Changed as suggested by Chris
>setenv save ipp.device/0 ipp://ip-address:631
>copy myoutput IPP0:
no window ppeared, no print
>echo >PRT: "hello printer"
no window ppeared, no print

@JosDuchIt

The error reporting is rubbish/non-existant. If you expand that output window is there anything in it?

The most likely problem is that you have the URL wrong in the config file. If you go into the printer's web interface it should tell you what it is supposed to be. Otherwise try ipp://ip.add.re.ss:631

(The path in the readme is correct for CUPS, which is all I've used it with)

@Chris

I was able to open the webpage of my printer (something i did not know about at alll) so i have acces to more needed? info

I noticed that you used to have this line in your ipp.device/0 file
ipp://demeter:631/printers/hp-LaserJet-1015


The doc mentions

SetEnv SAVE ipp.device/0 ipp://printserver:631/printers/Printer-Name

where does your "demeter" comes from ?

@JosDuchIt

If i understand it correctly "printserver" needs to be the ip address of your printer, something like 190.128.170.23.

Demeter is the greek goddess of harvest and fertility...not sure why she is here, though

@Raziel

that was my guess too but then having done
> SetEnv SAVE ipp.device/0 ipp://192.168.1.3:631/printers/DCP-7065DN
> copy myPSoutput IPP0:

i got a crash,
i get a crash also for
> echo > prt: "hello printer"

@JosDuchIt

Quote:

I found a doc from Brother, and what you need is: ipp://192.168.1.3:631/ipp

It also says the printer needs at least 8MB of RAM to use IPP.

This is the doc: http://solutions.brother.com/Library/pdf/ipp_W2K.pdf - there are some alternative URLs on page 8.

(Demeter is the name of my print server btw)

@Chris
tried this

>setenv save ipp.device/0 ipp://192.168.1.3:631/ipp
>copy myoutput IPP0:
no visual reaction, but also no print

@JosDuchIt

Did you reboot after setting that variable? (or at least deleted the ENV: copy?)
Does your printer have 8MB RAM?
Have you tried any of the alternative URLs in that document? setenv save ipp.device/0 http://192.168.1.3:80/ipp might be worth a try.

edit there's a command in the archive called ipr which sends a file to an IPP printer. You could try that, in case the problem is in my device code.
Can't remember how to use it, but ipr --help should tell you if none of the text files do (it's in the source code dir with a load of other junk).

@Chris
I did a lot of reboots, but then i have the impressinon that setenv SAVE does replaces the instances in env: and in envarc:
At least i can see that the chenges do take effect immediately
My printer has 32 MB of ram; its specs do ppoint to all the protocols tested till now, including ipp

I exhausted all variations on the ipp.device/0 env variable.
I have tried to use ipr, but till yet did not get much feedback. i can use
all i can list is a certain number of variations for the env variable thet do not crash or freeze when trying to print. None however seems to reach the printern (not in the echo >prt:, or in the copy to IPP0: mode

I'll truy to test more later.

For now i am trying to use Netprinter.

At least here in its raw mode the printer takes notice of a
echo >prt: something, but nothing is printed neither.

I am trying to set up its DOSDriver, that i copied from storage to devs/DOSdrivers
Its icon pointed to multiview.

I changed that to c:Mount
trying to print with
3.Amiga OS 4:> copy BareEd:Amiga/WwPostScript.output NETPAR:
Impossible d'ouvrir « NETPAR: » en écriture - COPY: Erreur -3

had the above effect so i guss i am misunderstanding something

Create a copy of ipr and call it ipq. Then try:


This should dump a load of stuff about the printer. If it doesn't, hopefully you'll get a meaningful error message.

If you want to print a file you need to use:


The "http://192.168.1.3/" could be anything from the earlier file. If you find a variant that works, put that in the env-var and try copying to IPP0: again.

It's weird that neither IPP nor LPR is working for you. Are you sure these are enabled in the printer interface? (they usually are by default)