Lukas Beeler’s IT Blog

Setting up new IP attached IPDS printers can be a bit tricky, because IBM’s documentation doesn’t always tell you everything you need. There are a few common pitfalls which I’d like to show.

First, for IP attached IPDS printers to work flawlessly, you will need 5722SS1 Option 36 - also called “PSF 1-45 IPM Printer support”. Without this option, you can’t use AFP (for overlays and similar graphical output), but you also can’t use *PSFCFG objects as user defined objects on the printer - which has severe drawbacks.

• Printer prompts for paper
  FORMFEED in the *DEVD probably isn’t set to *AUTOCUT. Note that this behaviour depends a lot on the IPDS implementation in the printer - i’ve seen this problem happen with both IPDS and HPT printers.
• Can’t print from windws when the printer writer is running
  If the printers doesn’t have a *PSFCFG for this printer yet, it’s necessary to create one now. The important part of the *PSFCFG for this to work is the RLSTMR value, which should usually be set to *SEC15.
• Printer can’t print jobs with more than 100 pages
  ACKFRQ in the *PSFCFG is probably set to 100. Most IBM/Lexmark workgroup printers i’ve encountered handle such a value. Set it a lot lower, i usually set it to 5. This also means less problems with paper jam recovery.
• The print writer dies without reason when idle
  This especially happens over VPN connections, or with flaky internet connections. It’s necessary to enable the automatic reconnect in the *PSFCFG. There are three values controlling this behaviour: RESTRTMR, RETRY and RETRYDLY. I usually set them to *IMMED, *NOMAX and 15. This makes printer writes more resistant to a flaky connection - in fact they will retry forever to get a connection, filling up the QSYSOPR *MSGQ, but this is a small price to pay for less calls because of dead printer writers.

As in interesting side note, you can’t change a *PSFCFG as long as it is in use by a printer - that’s why i usually create a seperate *PSFCFG for each printer, so i can end the print writer to change the configuration.