Printing: Risc PC to HP Colour LaserJet

OK.. an update and, (possibly), a sort of report
if anyone is still interested)! :))

With thanks to all the previous correspondents,
(Brian, Druck, Chris Evans and also mentioning
Andy Conroy and Chika (Chris Johnson) for their
invaluable support and immense patience with an
obdurate who couldn't see the difference between
a '0' and an '8' when setting up the network name
for the machine - well, there is a central cross-
bar in each figure!! - as well as thanks to Stefan
Bellon, who's RemotePrinterFS driver(s) are now
successfully employed over the network alongside
a CC Turbo driver on the parallel port, a St David
Pilling ArcFax and a useful !PDF printer filer. :))

Sporting such 'bitties' as full (automatic)
duplex printing ..(I do so want to find something
to try this with).. an onboard TX 10/100 Ethernet
'card' (RJ45) as standard and a whole raft of
facilities, the new Hewlett Packard CP1515n
promises to be a significant new additon to the
HP range ..especially at a price point that
should enable a whole new generation of Home
and Home Office 'Colour Print Groupies)...

This new Hewlett Packard CP1515n, with it's onboard
450/487MHz processor, 96MB of initial onboard memory
and with a basic resolution of 600dpi*600dpi and HPs
proprietary ImageREt3600, with the possibility of each
individual 'colour pixel' being fashioned from a total
of 800 shades comprising each of the three colours plus
black - (yes! this unique feature is what they now
confidently assert), enabling the printer to match
whatever is being flung at it.

I have tried some individualistic colouring and it
did indeed match near perfectly that which appeared
on screen.

Physically, the printer, (it masses in at around
18.5kg being a smallish well-proportioned block not
dissimilar to the very successful HP Lasers of some
years ago), is quite distinctive compared to the more
lightweight inkjet printers that abound Tesco's and
Curry's/Comet's shelves.

Plastics, 'fit', 'feel' and general ergonomics seem
to be of a top quality, as should be expected from
Hewlett Packard.. ;))

So initially quite an impressive entrance and
reasonably affordable entrance into the classic
HP Colour LaserJet market that only three or four
years ago was retailing at a goodly four figure sum.


To the nitty gritty of setting the beast up.

The CP1515n basic controls may be operated in any
of three discrete methods ..ie from it's small but
succint twin line LCD control panel, from I asume a
selection of RISC OS Printer Drivers and by paging
the printer directly via it's web page. (With Chika's
advice, I used html://<my_printer's_name>/ which then
gave me a very full run down of just about everything,
spread over many pages - including easy setting up of
onboard fonts, network nameing and re-setting, as well
all sorts of other interesting things).

Although with many thanks to Brian, who's very lucid
instruction set regarding the use of UNIPod's USB
port(s) remains an invaluable assistance, it was decided
- given the approx eight metres cabling needed, (acquired
a ten metre Cat 6 cable for 13.99gbp from Maplins),
to route the printer over a fast network connection
from the very outset.

Networking with the CP1515n's TX 10/100 card turned
out to be rather fortuitous given the Risc PC RISC OS
4.02 driving the thing. (With USB one had to install
the latest Windows XP or Vista software before any
first connection).

With a network setup the instructions allow all
connections to be made - and seemingly to an active
powered-on network - from which the machine is then
powered up to it's very first installation and self
checking routines..

Now came the time-consuming, exasperating and very
non and pro techie human part of the proceeding,
assisted by some remarkable patience from Brian at
one end of a phone with a three hour stint of tea,
biccies and grunting machine type trialling from a
County Council's Senior Support Tech (Chika) at a
120 miles in the opposite direction via another BT
landline connection!

To cut to the chase, we found.. after much trial and
error, that Stefan Bellon's "JetDirect" 'driver',
loaded together with his RPFS (Remote Priner Filing
System) in RISC OS 4.02's !Boot.Choices.Boot.PreDesk
and a simple (!!) line in !Printers PoScript2 PDF
did the complete job of connection ..and it's still
fully working at this moment...

Stefan Bellon's printer modules may be found from
his home page of:

http://www.sbellon.de/index.html

...where he introduces a whole army of useful RISC OS
utilities and experiences well worth catching for any
User, techie or like me, a non-techie..

Thank you Stefan.. :)) ..I will be reporting my
experience in setting up the brand new HP CP151n
to you, as you request.. :))

The printer at first didn't appear to be co-operating
at all with the network ..until I realised my very
basic mistake in confusing a '0' with an '8'. Wow,
so basic and such a wholly avoidable heart-ache!!

Then, even with the assistance of Stefan's pre-prpeared
!Printer PDF line, the printer still didn't work well,
dropping out and jamming up with all sorts of errors
until Chika suggested adding a "..;buffer=yes:.." to
the line, which for posterity and any using the same
JetDirect connection now becomes, (with "File" ticked
and "Append to file" left un-ticked...

"RemotePrinterFS;proto=JetDirect;host=<printer-name>;buffer=yes:"

So, so simple ..and yet the last phrase completing
the line took a leap of Chika's imagination ..even
despite Stefan's very comprehensive albeit slightly
techie instructions.

...and, yes, for the moment it all works ..beautiful
and striking 'colors' from HP's microscopic
'ColorSpheres', an effective 3600dpi type shading and
the ability as said to assert a decent RISC OS control
from both the onboard HTML as well as directly from
the control panel.

Questions that may now become important!

Although the printer is quite fast, (12ppm mono with
8ppm colour), there is still compared to the CC Turbo
driver'd LaserJet 5L PD sitting alongside on the icon
bar, a noticeable lag between actioning a print and
the resultant printing itself..

There do seem to be Print-Spoolers available, such as
Andreas Drehmel's "FastSpool+", (available from CJE),
a spooler from David Pilling (I think) as well as
another small Spooler from one of Stefan Bellon's own
collection.

However, all these spoolers seem to be primarily for
use with the parallel port - and not with more recent
additions of USB ports, or simply through a 10/100
network connection.

So, I'm left wondering if we do have spoolers for
these latter connections??

It would, indeed, be advantageous to have control
passed back to the User at the earliest opportunity.

No doubt there are other questions to resolve, but
perhaps this is enough for the moment.

I hope the above info and so on is helpful.. :))

Bill ZFC

--
Adoption InterLink UK with -=- http://www.billsimpson.com/
Domain Host Orpheus Internet -=- http://www.orpheusinternet.co.uk/
.

Relevant Pages

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