Cups, Apple Personal LaserWriter and a timeout

[thegreatorangepeel]

I succesfully set CUPS and Windows so my linux box doubles (triples? quadruples? etc.) as a print server. It was rather (http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2003/09/jsmeix_print-einrichten-90.html) easy (http://www.owlfish.com/thoughts/winipp-cups-2003-07-20.html) .

But after every print, I get a page that reads

ERROR: timeout
OFFENDING COMMAND: timeout

STACK:

(...and yes, it gives me an empty stack trace just as shown.)

It looks to me as though this is the printer saying somthing to the effect of, "Hey! What the hell was THAT supposed to mean?"

I've isolated it to a cups/linux issue. Anyone see anything like this before? The printer is hooked up via parallel port.

[banzaikai]

Umm...

Which Apple Personal LaserWriter? 300? 320? LS? NT?

And if it, indeed, is from Apple, then what the fsck is it doing on the parallel port? Every Apple printer I've ever used/seen/repaired used serial, AppleTalk, LocalTalk, or 10bT.

I'll need to know more specifics about your setup, in other words.

Now, it's been my experience that what you're getting is the dreaded "Manual-feed timeout error", and occurs because the printer is expecting you to shove some paper into the manual feeder within 40 seconds (default). You'll need to send the printer an "init string" written in PostScript to reset the value to "0" (zero), or to just put it into auto-feed. Once done, the flash memory will hold your settings through power cycles.
More on how to do this can be found at Apple's site, they'll just need to know the model number.

banzai "Amiga + Imagewriter" kai

[thegreatorangepeel]

NTR. My (obviously enough) mistake.

Is this Apple enough for you?
http://euclid.nmu.edu/~adrong/jpegs/apple-personal-laserwriter-NTR-M2000.jpg

As for the parallel port, it is exactly that. It does, however, have in addition to the parallel port, a 2 row 25 staggered pin female serial port and an unlabled port that I have read online to be an AppleTalk port.

From what I've read about this particular printer, Apple sold a (hardware) upgrade kit to make it post script compatable. Whether or not that included a parallel port I don't know.

I know some came with an optional/additional cartrige style tray, but there is only one paper tray on this particular printer.

[banzaikai]

Okay, we're getting closer. After scanning through the manual, I noticed:

*The NTR has a 10-position pushwheel switch for setting the printer. Try selecting mode 5, as it seems to be the one you want (mode 3 if you want HPLJ IIP/PCL4 emulation).

*The NTR is PostScript Level-2 out of the box. This can be confirmed by reading the test page that spits out when powered up.

*There are three lights on the panel. Green=Ready, Yellow1=Paper Feed, Yellow2=Paper Jam. If the printer, as I first suspected, is waiting for you to load a manual-feed sheet, then the Yellow1 will be blinking. If so, this confirms that you need to set the cups driver to "Autofeed Tray" and not "Manual Feed".

The pdf manual can be found at http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/Developer_Notes/Printers/Personal_LaserWriter_NTR.pdf
if you don't have one. Some PostScript examples are given for changing some of the parameters (like manual feed timeouts).

So, set cups for Autofeed, PostScript Level-2, lp0, and letter size. Set NTR for mode 5, infinite manual feed timeout (0), and keep your eyes on that middle light.

Or you can use mode 3, infinite timeout on NTR and tell cups you've got an HPLJ IIP PCL4 on lp0.

Then get back to us.

banzai "time out" kai