Goetz writes:

> We are far too early in the process to address 3000-L in a 'state of the
> union'
>  type of way, but let me throw out a few early (raw format) thoughts here:
>
>  we think that
>
>  - there is a level of misinformation about the networking spooler's
> operation
>    'out there', from both customer sources like this group and HP engineers
>    in the field and RCs.
>    we think the proper answer to that is better (external) information
>  and
>    (ex/internal) education, probably in the form of something like white
> papers,
>    application notes, troobleshooting guides or cookbooks.
>
>  - there are probably a few shortcomings of the current coding or overall
>    design of the MPE networking spooler (PJL issues, page level recovery
>    not working on some printers, SNMP issues?, TCP issues? serial spooler
>    compatibility, ...).
>    we think the proper answer to that is to investigate them piece by
>    piece, analyse the root causes, fix what we can fix, and document it _IF_
>    we cannot.
>
>  - there are probably issues which are no fault of the MPE networking
>  spooler,
>    but possiblly issues with the PJL, page_level_recovery, SNMP and maybe
> even
>    TCP support in the firmware of certain HP printers, Jetdirect cards, or
>    JetDirect boxes.
>    should we find those, it may not be in our realm to fix them (though we
>    will surely address them), but we can and will surely document them.

Let me primarily address the last of Goetz's points. I just got off of the
phone a few minutes ago with one of our customers, a credit union, that
bought a new HP8500DN color laser printer about three or four months ago.
This is the third one of these new printers that have been installed in our
customer base. They're brand new and they're particularly nice devices, as
you can see from the HP web page:

      http://www.pandi.hp.com/pandi-db/prodinfo.main?product=laserjet8500

While we support PCL printing, we don't recommend it. Everything we do, we do
overwhelmingly preferentially in PostScript. The differences in quality of
output and print reliability between the printing languages are simply
astounding. Moreover, PostScript works amazingly well (and blazingly fast)
with the HP3000's network printing. Further, PostScript is no longer an
option on most new HP printers; it's now standard, and I can't say how
pleased I am about that.

Nonetheless, some of the modern HP printers simply don't work with MPE/iX's
network spooler. When I say "don't work," I don't mean that annoying PJL
messages appear on the console, or that page level recovery doesn't work, or
that the print gets occasionally confused. I mean they just simply don't
print, period, in either PCL or PostScript.

The new 8500 color laser printer is one of those printers. So is the HP755CM
Design Jet large format color inkjet printer. Although these printers have
internal JetDirect cards in them, the presence of those cards is somewhat of
tarantula's trap. Trying to get networking working with these printers can
keep you busy for quite a while, but whatever's wrong, seems to be
uncorrectably wrong. Because these two printers have such different
heritages, I'm sure that there are more HP printer lines out there that
similarly will not work.

The system manager at the credit union that I mentioned is young, bright,
technically competent, and eager to do things right. Although I suggested to
him a couple of months ago to abandon the internal JetDirect card and use an
external one, he preferred to see if he couldn't get the HP3000's spooler to
work properly, thus over the course of the last several months he has worked
closely with the HPRC and downloaded and installed all of their recommended
spooler patches. However, all of that work was to no avail. Nothing helped.
The HP3000 simply won't print to the 8500DN.

When this thread began, it was on the weekend. On this past Monday morning, I
called him and asked if he wouldn't mind trying an experiment and do what I
suggested at the outset and install an external JetDirect EX Plus card on the
printer's parallel port and (temporarily, at least) abandon its internal
network card. He was in the middle massive job of reorganizing all of his
various branch offices' IP addresses when I called, so he had to put me off a
few days. When he finally had time to try it last night, he said it worked
immediately, like a dream. No fuss. No bother. A two-minute fix to a problem
that had made their 8500DN unusable for the last three or four months.

These little external JetDirect cards work so well with MPE/iX's networking
spooler that I'm a little reluctant to even suggest that MPE's spooler be
fixed for fear of doing more damage than good :-). One tack may simply be to
treat an increasingly larger number of HP printers as "foreign" devices.

We used to try to buy or borrow as many new printers as we could and test
them internally to insure that not only the HP3000's code but also our own
was working perfectly with the devices. To be absolutely honest, we don't do
that as religiously as we used to, but it would probably be a good idea for
CSY to fill a room somewhere with a broad variety of HP printers (including
many of the older printers) and use them all as a constant testbed.

Wirt Atmar