Lukas Beeler’s IT Blog

EuroForm offers IPDS modules for HP printers. One of our customers bought one of them directly - we didn’t test them before, so i didn’t have much clue on how to get them working. The customers technician even preinstalled them into the printer, so there wasn’t much work for me to do anyway.

I configured an appropriate *PSFCFG and *DEVD, according to the documentation provided by EuroForm.

Printing worked. Overlays worked. But i could only access trays 1-3 (numbered 2-4 on the printer itself). So i opened the WebConfig GUI of the Printer:

The printer recognized all 5 trays (yes, they were not yet configured for different paper types, but that isn’t a problem). But the IPDS module didn’t. I called the hotline of the swiss reseller Now Consulting.

While waiting for the callback, i played around with the options. And yes - the Envelope Tray and the Multifunction Tray mentioned in the second screenshot corresponded to trays 5 and 6 of the printer. The problem was solved. Now that was easy.

About three hours later, i was already at home (~18:00), one of the Now Consulting guys called me - told me to fax all information (screenshots were not acceptable). Oh well. Luckily the problem was already solved.

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.

HPT (Host Print Transform) allows the System i to print to non-IPDS printers. However, documentation from IBMs side is rather sparse or hard to find. I usually remember the phrase “support for various ascii printers”, and search for it. Currently, it gets us to IBM’s HPT Page.

HPT works with almost all printers that support PCL/PS. No, your cheap SOHO host-based network printers won’t work. But if you have an older Printer without network attachment, you can even use HPT together with iSeries Access (see the checkmark “Let host handle conversion to ASCII” in the connection setup screen).

If you’re using a network printer, remember to set the SYSDRVPGM option. This allows even advanced job control to work flawlessly from i5/OS.