food not printing in kitchen randomly

[Aidin]

Having an issue of food items not printing in the kitchen. This happens randomly. What could be the issue?

Wiring? Terminal malfunction?

Running Aloha ver 6.4

 

[TravisCraig]

This seems somewhat similar to my issue a couple posts down. I'll watch this post as well to see what happens.

 

[RokStar]

Please give much more information:
6.4 what?
What brand/model of printer?
What types of printers? (Serial/usb/network, etc.)
What types of cables and/or adapters?
Where are the printers fired from?
What is the cable run like?
Did anything change around the time this started or before?
Any other clues besides "Randomly"?
Have you tried swapping cables, terminals, adapters, printers...
Have you tried anything?

I can tell you the most often (imho) overlooked things to check:
(Travis, your setup also)

1) Power supplies to the printers. If this is more than 1 year old, change it to a brand new one. If this particular PS is failing, the damage to the printer may already be irreversible, so try a new printer and new P/S at the same time. P/S are first in the power supply "chain" and thus the first to take a hit. (this goes for all computers) And once it starts sending "bad" or "brown" power, the components in the circuitry will slowly start to degrade. 90% of all computer hardware problems are due to power.

2) Power circuits. All POS and computers should be on a completely separate, isolated ground circuit. NOTHING else should be on that circuit. I know this is very expensive, but if you can't do this, then get PowerVar GroundGard protection, or deal with these types of issues. I've seen this exact type of "random" issue tracked down to some idiot who plugged in a compressor (refrigerator, soda machine, a/c unit, etc.) in the same circuit as the POS. Every time the compressor kicked on, things went wonky. As you can guess, that was reported as "random" when it wasn't at all.

3) Disable auto-detect link speed on EVERY NIC ON THE LAN. Every NIC should be set to the same thing, either 100-Half, or 100-Full Duplex. BOH, Terminals, Printers, whatever you have. Autodetect is notorious for causing latency and other issues. Travis, in your case, I'm not familiar with the printers, so find out if they (or the print server) can be configured, and if not, either set everything to be the same, or leave only those devices on auto-detect. On the same note, make sure you have a good switch installed that's under ~3 years old.

4) Those stupid little CAT-5 to DB-25/9 adapters. Sometimes you change the printer and not these things, when they were the culprit all along.

Happy Hunting!
RS

 

[TravisCraig]

Rokstar if you wouldnt mind refer to my thread as to eliminate the need to double post but i am adding some information over there