G3 and ALPS printer
Chris Anderson
printer came with a SCSI connector, driver, and software specifically for
Macs. I also have an Adaptec 2906 PCI SCSI card. There are 2 other SCSI
devices on this bus, both of which work perfectly well: a ten year old HP
MO drive (old drivers too), and a new MicroTec scanner. The only thing that
doesn't work at all is the printer. Apple's System Profiler sees all the
other devices on the SCSI bus but not the printer. The bus is terminated
correctly, there are no SCSI address conflicts. The ALPS tech support
people don't have a clue why it doesn't work (though none of them seemed
too bright).
O great oracle of Mac truth, what is going on here?
--
Chris Anderson
chr...@fc.hp.com
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here. This is the War room.
-- President Muffley, "Dr. Strangelove"
-te-
-te-
--------------------------------------------
In article <7d6icb$3st$1...@fcnews.fc.hp.com>, chr...@fc.hp.com (Chris
Chris Anderson
on one of the other SCSI devices.
What about this idea: maybe the ALPS driver is hard coded to look for
INTERNAL SCSI only? An external card has a different bus number (or is it
port number?): 1 vs 0. Just a thought.
-te- (eas...@erinet.com) wrote:
: Bad SCSI cable, perhaps?
Chris Anderson
1) I hooked up the printer to the new G3 and ran Adaptec's SCSIProbe. It
detected the MicroTek scanner but not the printer.
2) I hooked up the printer to my old Mac IIci that has an internal SCSI bus.
I ran Drive7REM (SCSI bus scanner) and it detected the ALPS printer.
This shows me that:
1) there are no problems with the termination or cable or printer interface.
2) the Adaptec card is not compatible (supports SCSI-2, printer is SCSI-1)
and internal Mac SCSI interfaces are compatible.
It does NOT show me that the ALPS driver is expecting an internal SCSI bus
because the SCSI bus scanning software doesn't use the ALPS driver (it
wasn't loaded at all on the IIci).
John Gilbert
>Recently bought a blue and white G3 and an ALPS MD-1300 printer. The
>printer came with a SCSI connector, driver, and software specifically for
>Macs. I also have an Adaptec 2906 PCI SCSI card. There are 2 other SCSI
>devices on this bus, both of which work perfectly well: a ten year old HP
>MO drive (old drivers too), and a new MicroTec scanner. The only thing that
>doesn't work at all is the printer. Apple's System Profiler sees all the
>other devices on the SCSI bus but not the printer. The bus is terminated
>correctly, there are no SCSI address conflicts. The ALPS tech support
>people don't have a clue why it doesn't work (though none of them seemed
>too bright).
>
>O great oracle of Mac truth, what is going on here?
Here's something simple to check... Make sure that the printer is ON. It
won't show up on SCSI Probe (or in the Chooser) unless it the Power is
ON. I have an MD-4000 attached to the built-in SCSI of my Quadra 840AV,
and it works fine if I turn it on just before I want to print. It only
takes a moment for it to be recognized by the computer. This goes against
all I've heard about turning all the devices in the SCSI chain ON before
starting up the computer.
Speaking of which... You may want to try that. Turn the printer on BEFORE
you turn the Mac on.
Some other things: Check the termination. Try the printer as the ONLY
device on the chain. Try it in a different position in the chain. And
try a different cable.
Another thing that you may want to look into is whether or not your SCSI
card supports Synchronous transfer. Some cards advise you to only use
Asynchronous transfer devices with their card.
John G.
Chuck Garrett
Anderson) wrote:
>What about this idea: maybe the ALPS driver is hard coded to look for
>INTERNAL SCSI only? An external card has a different bus number (or is it
>port number?): 1 vs 0. Just a thought.
I have an ALPS printer on a 7500 which has a sererate external SCSI bus
so that is not the answer. I did have peculiar results when I first
installed it. By reversing the cable and the terminator connections, the
problem was solved.
Ray DeGennaro
+Thank you for pointing that out, but no, I used the same cable successfully
+on one of the other SCSI devices.
+
+What about this idea: maybe the ALPS driver is hard coded to look for
+INTERNAL SCSI only? An external card has a different bus number (or is it
+port number?): 1 vs 0. Just a thought.
Have you tried it with only the printer connected? Scanners are notorious
for being the monkey wrench in a SCSI chain.
Have you tried switching the port used by the terminator and the cable?
Have you tried changing the order of the devices?
Have you tried changing the ID of the scanner and/or printer?
Are any of the devices set to ID = 5? There were some Mac's that had
problems with that ID. I know it shouldn't matter here, but we are
entering the realm of SCSI WitchCraft.
I have a CD-R and a PITA (pain in the a**) Mustek scanner (good hardware,
absolutely crappy drivers & abhorrent tech support) that will ONLY work if
the scanner is the last device and the CD-R is the first. Also, I cannot
set the scanner to ID#6 and I MUST have the cable from the CD-R connected
to the DB-25 and not the Centronics connector.
To add an additional SCSI voodoo twist, when I had my old 1/4" tape drive
and external HD, the scanner had to be the first device in the chain. It
still wouldn't work set to ID=6, so at least that was consistent.
ray
--
-----
Ray DeGennaro
<mailto:rdeg...@bmsrs.usc.edu>
<http://www-scf.usc.edu/~rayd>
-----
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher
regard those who think alike than those who think differently."
--- Nietzche
ba...@netbox.com
chr...@fc.hp.com (Chris Anderson) wrote:
> Recently bought a blue and white G3 and an ALPS MD-1300 printer. The
> printer came with a SCSI connector, driver, and software specifically for
> Macs. I also have an Adaptec 2906 PCI SCSI card. There are 2 other SCSI
> devices on this bus, both of which work perfectly well: a ten year old HP
> MO drive (old drivers too), and a new MicroTec scanner. The only thing that
> doesn't work at all is the printer.
I've got this problem as well (mines with an Adaptec 2930). Alps tech support
is totally useless for this one. Adaptec hadn't heard of this but say they'll
look into it.
I just had a look at the problem with a SCSI analyser the Alps SCSI interface
is bad. It is not generating parity properly. (Data bytes with an even
number of bits on have bad parity.) This doesn't matter on a normal Mac SCSI
bus as it doesn't check parity. Adaptec cards obviously do.
Next is to ask Adaptec how to disable parity on their card. It may be possible
for Alps to modify their driver to ignore parity error.
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ba...@netbox.com
ba...@netbox.com wrote:
> In article <7d6icb$3st$1...@fcnews.fc.hp.com>,
> chr...@fc.hp.com (Chris Anderson) wrote:
> > Recently bought a blue and white G3 and an ALPS MD-1300 printer. The
> > printer came with a SCSI connector, driver, and software specifically for
> > Macs. I also have an Adaptec 2906 PCI SCSI card.
> Next is to ask Adaptec how to disable parity on their card. It may be possible
> for Alps to modify their driver to ignore parity error.
I got a response from Alps today, they say the driver won't be updated till
July, even though the fix is actually quite trivial.
In the meantime, I produced a fix which works for me. Anyone feeling
adventurous is welcome to try it:
<ftp://u1.netgate.net//u/barry/AlpsParity.hqx>