On Thu, 22 Aug 1996 10:30:51 GMT Paul Mandel said:
>We are looking for a printing prduct that prints from a HP3000 to
>a network printer.  This product must be able to let the operator
>know if there is a printer problem (such as needs more paper).
>It also should be able to print from a certain point (such as 5
>pages foward or 6 pages back).  Does anyone have suggestions?
 
The MPE/iX 5.5 release does network printing to JetDirect-compatible
printers, with page-level recovery on those printers which support it.
 
There are numerous 3rd party products that will do network printing to
JetDirect, Novell, LPR/LPD, and other protocols/devices, and provide some
degree of "restart" capability.  This much is probably old news for most
readers, but...
 
With *any* solution that I've seen, "restart" isn't as clean as you might
like.  With state-of-the-art jet direct boxes and printers with lots of
memory, you can have a surprising amount of the print job buffered in the
jet direct and/or printer.  As far as the 3000 is concerned, the job may
be finished and the spoolfile deleted.
 
It's a whole new ballgame if you're used to serial printers without much in
the way of buffering...
 
Jeff Kell <[log in to unmask]>