RetroPrinter Support

Hello,

I recently set up my Retro-Printer and have gotten as far as printing from my device to a networked printer, but the prints are mainly random characters/gibberish. (The device is a Zeiss GDx, printout is mainly large graphic, and the printer is a networked Brother CDW8900 added through CUPS.) I have tried all the emulation settings, except TXT, and none of the options correctly print the document. The closest setting so far was PS which showed about an inch of the top of the image, then another inch printed on a separate page. When I check the PDF printout folder on the rasp pi the images match the printouts (ie//it doesnt seem to be a printer problem since the PDFs are incorrect too)

Most of the settings also create numerous print jobs, almost seem never ending until I shut down the rasp pi.

What changes should I try next? Should I be tinkering with the jumpers on the Retro-Printer board or something?

Thanks for the help.

If the printout appears mainly correct, but with large gaps, or graphs being split across pages, there are several things to try.

a) Emulation setting. It all depends what printer your equipment was originally designed to work with. Was it Epson printers, HP PCL printers, a PostScript printer, Printtronix printer, Tandy printer or something else.

From your comments, it looks as though it was probably PostScript

b) Timeout setting. Where the equipment takes a while sending data (especially noticeable when it creates graphics data), then the default timeout of 4 may be too short. This timeout is used to determine the end of a print job and is set to 4 seconds. This may be too short for some equipment and would cause the printout to split at that point, which might be in the middle of a graphics control code, or some other control code sequence, which will cause corruption on the next page.

c) Bit_depth setting. We have no idea if your equipment uses all 8 bits to print data (the default) or only 7 bits (in which case the 8th bit might always be clear, or could contain corruption).

Those are the three main settings to look at.

If nothing helps, then you need to send copies of the raw data files and a sample original printout to compare so that we can investigate further.

We don't yet emulate every printer type which existed in the 1980s!

The numerous print jobs which never seem to complete is generally because the emulation type is incorrect and therefore the emulators get confused about the data - waiting for more information which never appears, or trying to convert a page which they see as gibberish.

Thanks for the information. I set the emulation back to PS and tried to print again before adjusting timeout, and now I've just got blank white prints haha. I'll have to keep tinkering.

The printer hooked up to this device was originally an HP printer, but I assume that doesn't necessarily mean its using HP PCL protocol? Sorry, I don't quite understand how those protocols work.

I retested all the emulation options, PS is definitely the only one that creates a single .pdf and doesn't cause an endless stream of prints. However now the pdf is just all white, nothing at all. At first I would get the chunks of the image as I described above, but now nothing. I didn't change anything other than having to reinstall the software on the SD card, and then set settings back to the way they were before.

Any help would be appreciated.

Also, some other notes in case it helps other users (and to make sure I'm not messing anything up):
1. I had to reinstall the software on the SD card a few times after I get errors when trying to edit config files. I find that if I have the wrong emulation option, the multiple prints it makes seems to corrupt the filesystem and I get an error in nano "not enough data read." The simplest way for me to fix this was just reinstall the software.

2. After any fresh install of the software, the RetroPrinter doesn't auto login. With a monitor plugged in to the rasp pi on start up, I have to wait for the autologin in to fail a few times, then Alt-F4 to cmd line. Then following a guide online, I found that this procedure helps to solve the login issue:

"
sudo mkdir -pv /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d/
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d/autologin.conf
and edited the file as follows:
[Service]
ExecStart=
ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty --autologin username --noclear %I 38400 linux
Change "username" with yours.
Save and close (CTRL+O, CTRL+X)
Now:
systemctl enable getty@tty1.service
"

Thanks for the auto login tip - I always use SSH connection to access the Retro-Printer.

Please send me some sample raw files to have a look as to why you are you getting blank pages - Hp printers generally only support PCL so far as I know.

I found a temporary solution to my problem without using the Retro-Printer, but when I get back to tinkering with it I'll post some raw data if need be. Thanks.