Serial Printer Emulator

[Meinard Hartmann]

Fortesting, my application needs to send a document to the printer. I don't really want to print this out, so I am looking for a 'fake' printer driver which could essentially print to nothing. I know that nul exists, but I also need the fake printer to support pausing. Any idea if the nul port can do this or any other fake printer driver?

For completeness, Microsoft actually has two different virtual printers included with office, depending on which version of office you use: Microsoft Document Image Writer for Office 2003, and Microsoft XPS Document Writer for Office 2007 and newer.

doPDF is a free PDF creator that does what the name suggests, creates PDF files. Once installed it will allow you to convert any type of printable documents to PDF files. doPDF7.3 installs itself as a virtual PDF printer driver so after a successful installation will appear in your Printers and Faxes list and also in the list of All Programs. Using doPDF you can convert to PDF in two ways:

I will soon be working on 'Print' and 'Print Preview' features of a product I am working on. I do not own a printer nor do I have any intention of buying one. I am looking for any free software which I can use to test my printing code.

The high costs of printer hardware can make a developer's job difficult when designing a product which has printing capabilities. Various methods exist for printing to virtual printers which avoid the need to purchase physical hardware during the research and development phases of a project as well as baseline troubleshooting of functionality.

Sorry about the lack of information. The system is a cardiac simulator. Right now we are using a Lexmark MS310d Printer, and we haven't gotten the chance to run any other printers with it. It uses a USB interface.

One option is LUFA But this not for Uno and is not for Arduino IDE. You must be comfortable with command line mode, makefiles, etc. Not for beginners. It works on boards with 32u4 (among other choices) such as Leonardo, Micro, and Pro Micro. But emulating a USB printer is only part of the task. The other task is converting the printer command language (PCL) into something readable.

I found that you can generate a special PRN file by selecting the desired printer in the print dialog , then select Print to File. This file contains printing instructions for the printer. The instructions seem to be printer/driver specific. If I submit the same print job to 2 different printers and print to file instead, the files are different.

Is the problem isolated to a server and specific printer(s)or just specific server(s)? First couple of thoughts are, what drivers are being used and if the printer(s) themselves have any firmware updates available. Finally, is this a new problem? Did it work fine previously? If so, what has changed? What has been updated that may have caused this problem.

All of the above was done. Print drivers matched. Cleanup done via print management mmc. Despite this, for some reason RDS prefers to use Remote Easy Print Driver instead. Manual driver selection override is greyed out, but no GPOs are enforcing this behavior either.

Howdy everyone! Some of the more regular users around here might have noticed I've been less active recently. Today, I'm happy to share why; a little project I've been working on since early April, dubbed "MK404 - (Printer Not Found)". (Yes, that's a deliberate reference to Prusa's 404 site error page in addition to jesting at it being a virtual printer).

It's an open source project based on SimAVR, with all the virtual components found in a MK3S (And more - see Features for more details on what it has or doesn't have. I'm still awed by the technical aspects behind the scenes that most people won't even bat an eye at - like custom char support on the LCD implementation). That means it runs the stock Atmel hex files for the most accurate possible simulation. It's primarily focused towards firmware developers and people that want to experiment with firmware customization as a debugging tool - without risking downtime on their real printer. What's more, you can use the advanced debugging features to safely inspect internal states you'd otherwise only be able to do with an ICD, if at all. (As you can imagine, breakpointing realtime operations and/or live systems with heaters is risky business...)

The project has been ongoing since early April and I've been working on it in my spare time, with contributions from the usual notorious firmware guys you've seen before in the Dev Diaries post - leptun, wavexx and 3d-gussner. (Also, shout-out to Gregoire S. for contributing Bear models - see Features...). It's been a long haul and while we've been public since late July, it's taken until now for me to be happy with the state of the project as something I would be satisfied calling "v1.0". (Currently, it's an RC in case there are any last-minute bugs identified). Much of that work was ramping up the system to more readily support outside contributions, with things like automated tests, code linting, etc.

This started as a tongue-in-cheek remark back when FW3.9.0 was in the RC stage and had issues with LA1.5. Debugging that was proving to be a bear, so at some point I joked about simulated hardware. One thing led to another and a casual investigation snowballed into what we have today.

It isn't a real life physics simulation. Overhangs are always perfect, bridges don't sag, and prints never detach. ? Some internal details that are not particularly relevant to normal operation are ignored or abstracted away. But I'm always looking to improve the hardware simulation capabilities and accuracy.

Nor is it a high-speed print G-code visualizer. It runs slightly faster than real-time. We'd like to find a way to run the simulation at full throttle but that introduces other problems when it comes to external interactions (like an attached MMU2)

The simulator is developed on Linux; this is SimAVR's native platform. OSX and Cygwin are "unofficially" supported as best I can. (See Supported Operating Systems for more info on what/why. If you encounter bugs on the latter platforms, please verify if they are reproducible in the Linux build and include this info in your bug reports, if possible.

Nothing comes to mind. But I'm sure that after posting this there'll be a flood of GitHub bugs, feature requests, and more. I'm only one person with a full time job outside of this, so I'll get to them when I get to them.

Based on previous announcements and posts about firmware releases, they do a lot of hands-on testing as well - and even the best simulator can't really predict what will happen once the real world decides to throw a wrench in "theoretically correct". Since they basically have an infinite number of printers at their disposal for testing... things probably just continued as they were. But for those of us with just one or two printers (or possibly not other models on which to test/verify a change)... it comes in very handy as an extra layer of reassurance and sanity testing... Or just something to muck around with.

For me, it was also a challenge; I learned a phenomenal amount about the inner workings of the printer/board and we even uncovered a few things along the way that lead to actual improvements in the official firmware.

Depends on the nature of the issue - but if the problem is due to software glitches (e.g. buffer corruption, overloading the Einsy so it skips steps) then I think it should be reproducible with the simulator - at which point, yes, you should be able to dive in. I haven't had to do it yet myself, but it's possible to breakpoint the executing AVR code - SimAVR has full GDB support.

Printer Emulations are on-printer apps that allow Print DNA capable printers to use a variety of printer command languages, while adding the benefits of manageability and security. Multiple emulations can be downloaded to a single printer, allowing users to choose between command languages as needed. These Printer Emulations are optimized to ensure fast throughput, while delivering high quality labels and receipts. Print DNA printers using Printer Emulations can be easily managed and secured using the Printer Profile Manager Enterprise app.

ZEBRA and the stylized Zebra head are trademarks of Zebra Technologies Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 2024 Zebra Technologies Corp. and/or its affiliates.

Several of our departments utilize an IBMi series server for their operations, using windows 10 pro PC's and an access client to connect to the server with emulator sessions. One department that serves the customers at a window has 3 workstations with HP Laserjet pro 400 M401dne printers USB attached to their Windows 10 Pro PC's.

They utilize the print session configuration with HPT to form the print session from the Iseries. In the beginning of March one of the HP M401's fuser died and was causing streaking. We decided to replace the printer, but as the M401's are no longer manufactured we could only find refurbished models. I researched and determined that the M404dn was of the similar "class" and went with this model to replace the malfunctioning one (the cost to replace the fuser, was barely less than purchasing new printer).

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