HP DJ 895 CSE in RH6.1

Which Linux, and do you have one of those funky systems with the PnP parallel port?

Redhat 6.1... and i don't think so...

What do you have in /etc/conf.modules for the parallel port (that's how it's connected, right?). The docs state that you want to use the paraport module and that (for RH 6.1) you need:

alias paraport_lowlevel paraport_pc

in /etc/conf.modules.

nope... didn't work

and it switched my default runlevel to 3 for some reason...

David

Really? Have you built a custom kernel that doesn't include the paraport module or otherwise futzed with the modules? The switch to run level 3 sounds like there was some sort of error in the boot up and it just stopped at 3 instead of continuing. Any errors reported when booting?

none, none at all... i don't know, i have not tried to switch back yet... look up my old question... title was something like

does not detect my HP 895Cse in RH6.1

that worked for a little bit, in fact, i still don't know why it no longer works...

oh yeah, and do you by any chance know when RH 6.2 comes out? (maybe that will work...)

David

ok man.. your paraport thing worked... kind of...

it is parport_lowlevel parport_pc

not paraport


and it detected my printer... now it won't print... what to do.. what to do...

David

Sorry about the typo. I try to check closely for typos but I ocassionaly slip up.

Okay, we can see the parallel port now and that's a necessary but not sufficient condition. What mode do you have the parallel port set to in the bios? The 895 should be okay with either "standard parallel" or "bi-directional". The simplest mode that works is usually best.

A lot of the later HP printers care more than they ought to about the cable (this has bit me more than I care to admit). Is the cable one of the fancy-dancy-expensive ones or just a generic printer cable?

The 895cse is an HP PCL3 printer so it ought to be able to print ASCII (line terminators might be wrong...). What happens if you "cat some-text-file >/dev/lp0"?

Absolutly nothing...

and it is a pretty simple 1294 compliant cable (or whatever the number actually is ... i am just using that without checking...)


David

Do you have access to any other printer that could be used, temporarily, to see if it's the printer of the system? I'd be nice if you could swap both the printe and the cable at the same time.

i use the printer in windoze...      

and the printer, with the same cable... has worked with this computer running RH6.1 before...

Here is the answer i got before...

U can use parport for detecting lp ports steps:
                    1.Add these lines in /etc/rc.d/rc.local file all are in single line ...

                    /sbin/insmod /lib/modules/2.2.12-20/misc/parport.o

                    /sbin/insmod /lib/modules/2.2.12-20/misc/parport_pc.o

                    /sbin/insmod /lib/modules/2.2.12-20/misc/parport_probe.o

                    /sbin/insmod /lib/modules/2.2.12-20/misc/lp.o


                    2.Add this line in /etc/lilo.conf
                    this is also a single line ..

                    append="parport=0x3bc parport=0x378,7 parport=0x278,auto lp=parport0 lp=parport1 lp=parport2"

                    and run /sbin/lilo
                    and restart ur machine and run printtool .. it should work ..

i have set in my bios to have my parport be 378 and 7 IRQ

There's something else going on here. All I've ever need to do w/6.1 is to add the alias line in conf.modules and reboot. Let me do a bit of research and see what else might be causing the problem.

Adjusted points to 100

that would be great... i am uping this to 100 points, if we do finally get it... maybe i will give ya more :)

I've had a similar problem before, but yours sounds a bit more complicated...however this is how I solved mine:
Placed only the following lines in /etc/rc.d/rc.local
/sbin/insmod /lib/modules/2.2.12-20/misc/parport.o
/sbin/insmod /lib/modules/2.2.12-20/misc/parport_pc.o

If I also installed the lp module(sbin/insmod /lib/modules/2.2.12-20/misc/lp.o ), it did not want to work. From my understanding RH6.1 uses a new device called a parport which dynamically allocates the lp port.
You can always use the lsmod, rmmod and insmod commands to install and remove modules on the fly without putting them into rc.local and then having to reboot/run rc.local each time for the changes to take effect. So my suggestions: Type lsmod and see which of the above mentioned modules are installed. Remove all of them using rmmod <modulename>(i.e. rmmod lp) then reinstall only the parport and parport_pc using above commands and see if that fixes the problem.
Hope it helped.

Is this box using a recent motherboard, like for a PII or PIII? And/or does it dual boot an windows OS?. I think I managed to get PIII MB to do something that looks a lot like what you've described. I'm trying to repeat the problem now so I can check to see if my solution works.

I have a PII... 266 intel dual boot.. Linux on hdb5....

and no, those things didn't work...      

nope.. i had had PNP OS on... and i turned it off.. still nothing... could windoze be doing anything else?


also, do you have AIM or ICQ?

AIM: djtansey
ICQ: 7764505

so we can have a little more interactive sessions...

      

i don't know what it was.. but you did it man! it works... A for you baby! thank you again :)

It was almost undoubtedly the PnP OS being on. I forgot to tell you to tell the bios to "reset ECD" or "reset configuration data". It's normally near the PnP setting and tells the bios to forget any previously negotiated PnP settings.

thanks again :)