WL-500gx & LPT printer

[FauDrei]

Hi all, I would be thankful if you can help me with the following...

Currently I am in broadband wireless router purchase investigation, and the very moment I realized that ASUS has published firmware sources for his routers AND there is a whole community chewing on them - I had my instant choice of manufacturer.

I have the possibility of obtaining both – 500g and 500gx, and my "natural choice" is, of course, the Deluxe version.

But...

I have an old Lexmark Optra E+ laser printer which does not have USB connection option, and my prerequisite is to attach it the router. Now, since 500gx does not have LPT port, the obvious choice would be to go for 500g.

But 2...

If you look at Printer server support page for WL-500g Deluxe (http://www.asus.com/999/html/share/12/txt/30/index.htm), a couple of USB to LPT adapters and cables are listed there as working.

Now...

The intention is to connect 500gx through USB to LPT adapter with my Optra. Will that work? Anyone tried it? I swept through the RCH and other parts of the forum without finding anything similar. I ask you for your suggestions and/or recommendations on that.

Thanks in advance,

V3

[FauDrei]

Had no luck with anyone answering my questions so I took the risk and bought 500gx and USB to parallel cable (http://www.sweex.com/product.asp?pId=301)...

Result?

It, kind of, works. Here is the story...

Printer (Lexmark Optra E+) installed the MS driver and worked flawlessly from the moment it was connected with the parallel cable to the computer.

When connected with the USBtoIEEE1284 cable to the computer, it needed some tweaking... With MS provided driver (Winprint RAW print processor) the printer "blinked" memory full error. By changing the data type to "RAW (auto FF)" and waiting a little longer the page (text and graphics) was properly printed. Simple pages without graphics worked well even with plain RAW data type. This problem was solved by using the Lexmark provided drivers which worked without problems also in RAW mode, although were slightly slower than the MS drivers (and faster than MS + RAW auto FF combination).

Happy with that, I connected the printer to WL-500gx (1.9.2.7-5a). Status page said "unknown Lexmark Optra E+ LaserPrinter" is connected. Configured the IP port to 9100 RAW and started printing...

Simple text pages went through without problems. But only few top centimetres of complex pages (text, pictures...) were printed. Tried every possible combination of printer options, drivers, data types, spooled/direct printing and found out that the only way to print complex page properly was to lower the printing resolution from 600 to 300 dpi. Even more puzzling was the fact that "Modiprint" print processor (RAW) printed 5-6 centimeters (in 600 dpi) more than "Winprint"?!?

So, I suppose it is some kind of buffering issue - when you send more than certain amount of data in a certain way the printer gets just part of the page... It probably has to be something about USBtoIEEE1284 cable because this cable introduced such behaviour, but print processor and the WL-500gx printing daemon are affecting the output too.

Am I kicking in the dark here? Any tips, hints, suggestions?

V3

[Oleg]

Do you've anything in the system log during the printing attempt?

[FauDrei]

Hi Oleg, thanks for your involvement.

When printing, just something like these two lines are appended:

-[start]-------------
Jun 18 13:43:22 p9100d[122]: Finished job: 546916 bytes received, 0 bytes sent
Jun 18 13:53:30 p9100d[122]: Connection from 192.168.1.74 port 2392 accepted
-[end]--------------

Perhaps you will also make something out of following USB/printer init lines from syslog:

-[start]-------------
Jan 1 01:00:05 kernel: usb.c: registered new driver usbdevfs
Jan 1 01:00:05 kernel: usb.c: registered new driver hub
Jan 1 01:00:05 kernel: usb-uhci.c: $Revision: 1.275 $ time 21:43:09 Apr 20 2005
Jan 1 01:00:05 kernel: usb-uhci.c: High bandwidth mode enabled
Jan 1 01:00:05 kernel: PCI: Enabling device 01:02.0 (0000 -> 0001)
Jan 1 01:00:05 kernel: usb-uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0x100, IRQ 2
Jan 1 01:00:05 kernel: usb-uhci.c: Detected 2 ports
Jan 1 01:00:05 kernel: usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
Jan 1 01:00:05 kernel: hub.c: USB hub found
Jan 1 01:00:05 kernel: hub.c: 2 ports detected
Jan 1 01:00:05 kernel: PCI: Enabling device 01:02.1 (0000 -> 0001)
Jan 1 01:00:05 kernel: usb-uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0x120, IRQ 2
Jan 1 01:00:05 kernel: usb-uhci.c: Detected 2 ports
Jan 1 01:00:05 kernel: usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
Jan 1 01:00:06 kernel: hub.c: USB hub found
Jan 1 01:00:06 kernel: hub.c: 2 ports detected
Jan 1 01:00:06 kernel: usb-uhci.c: v1.275:USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver
Jan 1 01:00:06 kernel: PCI: Enabling device 01:02.2 (0000 -> 0002)
Jan 1 01:00:06 kernel: ehci_hcd 01:02.2: PCI device 1106:3104
Jan 1 01:00:06 kernel: ehci_hcd 01:02.2: irq 2, pci mem c00a4000
Jan 1 01:00:06 kernel: usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3
Jan 1 01:00:06 kernel: PCI: 01:02.2 PCI cache line size set incorrectly (0 bytes) by BIOS/FW, correcting to 32
Jan 1 01:00:06 kernel: ehci_hcd 01:02.2: USB 2.0 enabled, EHCI 1.00, driver 2003-Dec-29/2.4
Jan 1 01:00:06 kernel: hub.c: USB hub found
Jan 1 01:00:06 kernel: hub.c: 4 ports detected
Jan 1 01:00:06 kernel: usb.c: registered new driver usblp
Jan 1 01:00:06 kernel: printer.c: v0.13: USB Printer Device Class driver
Jan 1 01:00:06 kernel: hub.c: connect-debounce failed, port 2 disabled
Jan 1 01:00:07 kernel: hub.c: new USB device 01:02.0-2, assigned address 2
Jan 1 01:00:08 kernel: printer.c: usblp0: USB Bidirectional printer dev 2 if 0 alt 1 proto 2 vid 0x067B pid 0x2305
Jan 1 01:00:08 kernel: printer.c: usblp0 Device ID string [260]='MANUFACTURER:Lexmark International;COMMAND SET:PCL 5 Emulation,NPAP,PJL;MODEL:Lexmark Optra E+ LaserPrinter;CLS:PRINTER;DES:Lexmark Optra E+ LaserPrinter;CID:Lexmark_InternationaBA9C,Lexmark_ Internationa958C,Lexmark_Internationa5E60,Hewlett-PackardHP_LaEEE3;'
-[end]--------------

...and till the end of initialization log there is twice:

-[start]-------------
Jan 1 00:00:12 kernel: printer.c: usblp0 Device ID string [260/max 1552]='MANUFACTURER:Lexmark International;COMMAND SET:PCL 5 Emulation,NPAP,PJL;MODEL:Lexmark Optra E+ LaserPrinter;CLS:PRINTER;DES:Lexmark Optra E+ LaserPrinter;CID:Lexmark_InternationaBA9C,Lexmark_ Internationa958C,Lexmark_Internationa5E60,Hewlett-PackardHP_LaEEE3;'
Jan 1 00:00:12 kernel: printer.c: Parsing USBLPID...
-[end]--------------

-[start]-------------
Jan 1 00:00:16 kernel: printer.c: usblp0 Device ID string [260/max 1552]='MANUFACTURER:Lexmark International;COMMAND SET:PCL 5 Emulation,NPAP,PJL;MODEL:Lexmark Optra E+ LaserPrinter;CLS:PRINTER;DES:Lexmark Optra E+ LaserPrinter;CID:Lexmark_InternationaBA9C,Lexmark_ Internationa958C,Lexmark_Internationa5E60,Hewlett-PackardHP_LaEEE3;'
Jan 1 00:00:16 kernel: printer.c: Parsing USBLPID...
-[end]--------------

If you can make anything out of this... Thanks

V3

[FauDrei]

The print log is actually:

-[start]-------------
Jun 18 13:53:30 p9100d[122]: Connection from 192.168.1.74 port 2392 accepted
Jun 18 13:54:05 p9100d[122]: Finished job: 504427 bytes received, 0 bytes sent
-[end]--------------

My mistake - I copied wrong two lines before...

[Oleg]

I mean, do you've something unusual in the log, when printing fails?

[FauDrei]

No, look at this:

-[start]-------------
Jun 18 15:07:05 p9100d[122]: Connection from 192.168.1.74 port 2954 accepted
Jun 18 15:07:15 p9100d[122]: Finished job: 247057 bytes received, 0 bytes sent
Jun 18 15:57:22 p9100d[122]: Connection from 192.168.1.74 port 4437 accepted
Jun 18 15:57:41 p9100d[122]: Finished job: 435206 bytes received, 0 bytes sent
-[end]--------------

First print job printed OK (300 dpi), the second printed just few upper centimetres of the same page but 600 dpi.

[Oleg]

Well, there is nothing that wl500g could do for you. You could try adapter from other vendor to see if it would work better.