Printing over a network (through VirtualRPC)

[Paul Beverley]

Hi All

I think I've had this problem before, but I can't remember how to
solve it.

I was doing some printing, first from an old RiscPC and then through
VRPC to a network printer, and we had problems and had to stop the
printing, but somewhere along the line things have got messed up.

The current situation is as follows.

1) I've restarted all computers and printers, so all *should* be
clean.

2) If I print from Word on the PC side all is well.

3) If I try to print from RISC OS (using Impression or TechWriter)
the printer just doesn't respond. Indeed if I use Impression, it
says "Preparing the Printer" and that's that - locked solid and
I have to kill RISC OS and restart it.

4) If I try to print from the old RiscPC, it prints to the local
printer, but via the network it again says "Preparing the Printer"
and that's that, although <escape> gets it out of the printer
driver.

My theory *was* that there's some buffer somewhere in the desktop PC
that's got filled up. I remember something like this before, finding
some buffer file in the Windows side that was massive - gigabytes.
Someone told me to delete it; I did and then all was well.

However, since I discovered (4) above, that suggests that it can't
be the PC that's causing the problems. It just seems to leave the
two RISC OS printer drivers which use Jet Direct, according to the
Printer control Connections which says it's going to file:

RemotePrinterFS#proto=JetDirect;host=192.168.7.253:

Any thoughts anyone, please?

All the best,

Paul

Paul Beverley LCGI (Archive Publications) Advanced Member SfEP
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Editing & proofreading +44-1603-722544 - http://www.archivepub.co.uk

[Paul Beverley]

In message <bae402b...@paul.archivepub.co.uk>
Paul Beverley <pa...@archivepub.co.uk> wrote:

> The current situation is as follows.
>
> 1) I've restarted all computers and printers, so all *should* be
> clean.
>
> 2) If I print from Word on the PC side all is well.
>
> 3) If I try to print from RISC OS (using Impression or TechWriter)
> the printer just doesn't respond. Indeed if I use Impression, it
> says "Preparing the Printer" and that's that - locked solid and
> I have to kill RISC OS and restart it.
>
> 4) If I try to print from the old RiscPC, it prints to the local
> printer, but via the network it again says "Preparing the Printer"
> and that's that, although <escape> gets it out of the printer
> driver.

By process of elimination, even though Word could print, the problem
*had* to be in the buffer in the network printer server box. I thought
I remembered something about it not resetting on power-off unless it
was off for at least 30 seconds.

I tried that, and all is now, thankfully, back to normal.