HP printers printing garbage

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Level 2

384 points

HP printers printing garbage

Does anyone else have the following problem or a solution to the following problem?

HP printers : LaserJet 2100, 2200, color 4600

Clients and server 10.4.1 all installed from scratch. server G5 DP 2.3, clents a range of aging g3s and g4s.

When printing to shared queues on server or directly from client to printer we are periodically getting printouts with nonsense text replacing the text showing on the screen. This never happened when all machines were running various versions of 10.3.

Thanks.

-Erich

Posted on Jun 22, 2005 2:23 PM

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Answer 1

AJ

Level 5

7,075 points

Jun 23, 2005 1:15 PM in response to Erich Wetzel

Check the print driver/options.

somewhere within the settings, there is an option to output Binary or ASCII.

The problem machine/programs are likely outputting binary.
Change it to ascii, and your problem will go away.

You may find that settings are program specific, and located in different places in each program. For example, I know it is a separate option/setting in Quark, Photoshop, and Preview.

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Answer 2

Erich Wetzel Author

Level 2

384 points

Jun 23, 2005 2:10 PM in response to AJ

Thanks AJ

I have seen and fixed the problem with Photoshop. This is mostly with FileMaker. But I was not clear enough above (sorry)... it does not happen with a whole page of text, it ranges from just a few words in a record to virtually the entire thing coming out as garbage from the printer.

The odd part is that if the same job is requested by the same user a little later in the same day the printout is exactly as on the screen.

FileMaker's site does not offer any insight and neither does HP from the searches I have tried. Our printers and versions of FileMaker have not changed only the OS 10.3.9 to 10.4.1... So this seems to be a 10.4 server/client problem or maybe an HP driver problem...

Either way, thanks. Still working on this one.

-erich

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Answer 3

Erich Wetzel Author

Level 2

384 points

Jul 8, 2005 3:40 PM in response to Erich Wetzel

May have resolved this one.

Dispite FontBook's claim that they are valid... some of our older fonts (not included in current OSX system) are not running correctly 100% of the time. Selected newer fonts for the offending fields, so far no new printing problems.

It seems that if you see this type of printing problem, check your font file ages and use something more current if you can.

Will be back with more if something else surfaces.

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Answer 4

Jul 11, 2005 9:09 AM in response to Erich Wetzel

Here at our company we have half of the printers of a Windows 2000 server, and the remained on OSX Server 10.3.9. On the mac we are running appletalk for the printers. On the client 10.3.9 mac If i enable LDP printing and leave printing in Quark to binary, i just get garabage from the HP 5000. If i change it to ASCII it prints correctly, but increases file sizes. So currently we have the server running in Appletalk.

What benefit do i have to switch from Appletalk?

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Answer 5

AJ

Level 5

7,075 points

Jul 15, 2005 6:36 AM in response to kevin manson

Appletalk = zero configuration - select Print Center/add/appletalk, the OS will scan the subnet, locate any printers running appletalk, and auto-configure for same.

LPD: you have to know and manually enter the IP, queue name, etc, have the Apropriate PPDs, know where the PPDs are, manually select them, etc. If, like one of my printers, it does not use standard LPR ports, you need to know and configure that, too.

Yuo don't need appletalk on the server simply for printing.

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Answer 6

Erich Wetzel Author

Level 2

384 points

Sep 12, 2005 7:39 AM in response to Erich Wetzel

Another possible source or solution for this problem:

Corrupt cache of fonts used. The font cache seems to work on a per user basis. They are also localized to the client machine not the server.

On the client go to Library>Caches>com.apple.ATS. Folders inside are listed by user ID #. Simply put the folder with the ID # for the user having the font trouble in the trash. Restart. Empty trash. Font problem went away.

This may be the actual problem. The earlier solutions I found only changed things in the short term.

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Answer 7

Erich Wetzel Author

Level 2

384 points

Sep 20, 2005 9:50 AM in response to Erich Wetzel

Another possible solution to this problem. Again this appears to be a font handling issue from the OS and not a printer issue. I will try to post in a more appropriate location as this has changed the type of discussion. Many if not all of the problems we have had with this issue are on the monitor before printing. So if you have fonts showing as garbled text on the monitor, definately check the following sites.

http://daringfireball.net/2005/03/font_caches

Check also the following from Apple which is referred to in the 1st site.

http://images.apple.com/pro/pdf/L303878BFont_TTv4.pdf

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Answer 8

Sep 21, 2005 5:08 PM in response to Erich Wetzel

I've found with Tiger Server that I was better off leaving my printers set to a Generic printer, rather than reconfiguring them in Apple Printer Utility with the correct printer driver.

Example:
- Tiger Server queue configured as Xerox WorkCenter Pro 55; client uses Bonjour to choose printer: Client prints, and gets multiple pages of garbage.
- Tiger Server queue configured with Generic driver; client uses Bonjour to choose printer: pages print fine.

This behaviour seems to have changed since Panther Server, since I used to be obsessive about customizing each print queue, and never had any trouble.

My last remaining quirk to solve is why our Xerox WorkCentre Pro 55s still print a banner page, despite the fact that neither the client, the queue, nor the printer have "Print Banner Page" selected. The banner pages come out with "root" listed as the user, so I've got huge odds on it being a bug in Tiger Server...

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Answer 9

Oct 24, 2005 3:21 PM in response to Julian Daniel

In case anyone out there is using a Xerox WorkCenter Pro 55, and is banging their head against the wall trying to figure out why the banner page prints when using OS X Tiger Server queues...and banner pages are turned off in both Server Admin and the WorkCenter Pro admin pages:

The WorkCenter Pro 55 web interface DOESN'T turn off banner pages (despite what the interface and tech support tell you). This can only be done at the operator panel of the photocopier.

1. Press Access A button to the right of the photocopier
2. Type the admin password and press Enter
3. Press Go To Tools
4. Press System Settings
5. Press More (top right of screen)
6. Press Job Sheets
7. Press Banner Sheets
8. Press Disabled
9. Press Save
10. Press Exit Tools

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