On 07-Jan-09 22:16:19, Chris G wrote:
[...] Yes, but things have developed a little, see below. [...] Now to the 'below' bit!
The pictures *eventually* came out on the LJ1320, it took an hour or so per page. They never came out on the OJ7310 and have disappeared from the print queue.
There seems to be a serious speed problem on the LJ1320, when I printed (the same) web page on the LJ1320 and the OJ7310 it came out much faster on the OJ7310. The printer driver for the LJ1320 is shown by CUPS as "HP LaserJet 1320 series Postscript (recommended)", is this an issue (i.e. does postscript/ghostscript make it slow)?
I have a HP LJ 1300 (same series as yours), and *always* send PostScript to it. It is pretty snappy for most things, but bit-mapped images lead to bulky PostScript. This can take a while (up to a couple of minutes per page) to get through to the printer (over a parallel cable).
Sometimes, it is all too much for the limited RAM (16MB, manufacturer's default; "5.6MB available") installed on it. Then the printer may hang forever[*], with its "activity" light blinking. It is possible that this is your problem, since you are printing photos. I should install a supplementary 64MB module, but am not sure what to put in (and HP's own RAM upgrades are hideously expensive). Maqybe you should think along these lines. It is compatible with your oibservation that "ls | lpr" works. But also note that something in CUPS will be coverting the ASCII output from 'lpr' into PCL (HP's "Printer Command Language") or PostScript. [*] except that there is a 5-min timeout.
The other thing I would say (which may have nothing to do with your problem) is that I have never properly come to terms with the switch from good old lpd (and printcap) to CUPS some years ago. So I print from any of my machines by NFS-mounting onto a machine running pld (from 1998) and doing "lpr <whatever>" from the command-line in that machine. This works!
Hoping this helps -- but I recognise that printer problems of this kind can be pretty perplexing. Maybe this may at least throw a bit of light.
Ted.
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