Laserjet 1012 on print server 3

[mugs82]

Greetings All,

I just setup a Laserjet 1012 on an HP 175x print server. I set the printer up locally using a tcp/ip port on a Windows 2000 member server and shared it out.

Whenever someone prints a document, a page follows that says "unsupported personality: PCL"

Any ideas on how to get rid of this annoying problem?

Thanks in advance!

 

[mugs82]

Hey - Just resolved the problem. The USB communications mode was set to Auto - I decided to hard set it to PCL and Voila! The "unsupported personality: PCL" page quit printing. We'll see if it lasts.

 

[mugs82]

I spoke to soon...The problem is back.

 

[hpwizzard]

The HP LaserJet 1010 and 1012 series printers are host based and do not support PCL printing. If a PCL driver is used with either of these printers, an error page will print with the words Unsupported Personality: PCL in the upper left hand corner.

Solution :

Install the host based driver for these printers.

 

[1101001100110101]

Yup I had the same problem, you need to install the host based printer driver provided on hp's site for the 1000 series printers. Once that happens the errors go away.

 

[christov]

Can someone explain to me what a 'host based' driver is? I thought is was the driver you get from the manufacturers web site but i understand there's more to it than that.

 

[mugs82]

From Intel...

Some printers are called Host-based Printers (a.k.a. GDI printer, Windows-only printer). The term Host-Based Printer is used to refer to a printer that has very little intelligence. It does not have a Page Description Language (PDL) interpreter, any built in fonts, or print straight ASCII text. Therefore, it does not require a powerful processor or large amounts of RAM or ROM. To overcome this lack of printer intelligence, the work of generating each page shifts from the printer to the PC, specifically the host-based printer driver on the PC. This is where the actual page (raster) data is created and sent down to the printer. Since the data needs little to no processing on the printer (binary data in a stream or simple packet protocol) it can be sent down to the printer and go to the page faster. With faster PC's such as those using Intel® Pentium® III processors, this sometimes allows faster overall printing than formatting the page using the printer's processor. Unfortunately, the printer drivers for these printers are often designed to communicate back and forth with the printer-they can't take a stream of data from a PC or print server without communicating between the printer and the driver. If this bi-directional communication is required for a printer driver to work, it often cannot be networked. Printers that double as fax machines often have this restriction. These printers are not designed for use on networks but many of them can be finessed into working with an external print server.

Hope that helped.

 

[christov]

Thanks mugs82, that has really helped and clarified a few things for me that i really didnt know! Much appreciated..christov