Date: Sun, 14 May 2017 12:06:37 -0500 (CDT) From: "Valeri Galtsev" <galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu> To: "Manish Jain" <bourne.identity@hotmail.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Printer advice Message-ID: <37357.128.135.52.6.1494781597.squirrel@cosmo.uchicago.edu>
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On Sun, May 14, 2017 3:34 am, Manish Jain wrote: > On Sun, May 14, 2017 at 1:35 PM, Thomas Mueller <mueller6722@twc.com> wrote: > My luck with HP has been bad, enough to dissuade me from buying any more HP products. Just for balance: we love HP printers, we use HP printers forever. We allow clients print through print server only (configuring printers to accept jobs only from print server). HP printers always have been easy to install. On client if some stupid laptop has no HP drivers (to save space), just use generic postscript driver. I only can speak for laser HP printers. They are extremely reliable. I just retired printer that worked for the department for over 15 years, heavily used, and is still working. Never broke of failed. And HP still makes supplies for this "obsolete" printer. Which brings me to the <rant> I decided to never ever buy any Xerox product (even though I still would sign under their old motto: "we taught the world how to copy"). Some 7 or 8 years ago Xerox made a decision to eradicate "compatible" supplies. They did it this way: every 3 Months or so they were releasing "new" printer model, essentially the same previous one, only toners for that were incompatible with "older" models. This made manufacturing "compatible" after market supplies economically unprofitable, as there was only small number of each Xerox printer model. I wouldn't care as I'm used to buy slightly more expensive supplies made by printer manufacturer. But: 6 years after some Xerox printer model was sold (Phaser 6200 was our case), Xerox stopped making toners, and parts with finite life, after a life of such a part ends printer will refuse to work. As a result I had to throw away decently young perfectly working Xerox printers. So: no Xerox anything will ever be purchased or rented whenever I have enough leverage to affect the decision. </rant> > I have HP LaserJet Professional M1212nf MFP, and the first > several attempts were fruitless, in both NetBSD and FreeBSD. I finally got it to print in NetBSD through cups with a special PPD file, think FreeBSD might also work with the same PPD file. CUPS installed on any system will work with the same PPD file which brings specific description of that particular printer, as PostScript Printer Description (PPD) is written in postscript which effectively is programming language which both CUPS and printer firmware (system that is run on postscript printer) implement. You can get PPD for you printer wherever you find it, and use in CUPS on your system. PPD can be found on CD that comes with printer, it can be taken from successful installation of printer on different system (e.g. macintosh, Linux...), it comes as a part of "driver" package one can download from printer manufacturer website, you can try linuxprinting.org webiste: https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/openprinting/start Good luck! Valeri > Only Ethernet worked, USB didn't. > I am rebuilding FreeBSD installations after getting nonbootable results updating NetBSD (version 7.99.71 of current branch). Then I intend to rebuild many packages including cups and hplip. I never got scanning or fax from computer to work. One adverse factor is the need for a > proprietary binary plugin. I was on Xerox website and more favorably impressed, but didn't buy the printer because I already have that HP multifunction printer. > > > Have you tried using the printer with hplip ? hplip gives you every single HP function available and usually works very well. > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to > "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" > ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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