Macro Compatibility Between HP4600 vs HPlj1300

[jknt]

I have several issues I'm trying to resolve regarding PCL macros.

First, when I download macros to an HP lj1300 the download works fine, however the printer seems to go into an "offline" state which requires the ready button to be pressed the first time the printer is used after a macro is loaded.

Second, macros that print properly on an HP lj1300 will, when executed on an HP 4600, print solid black in place of the overlay. At one point as I was designing and testing, macros worked on this printer now they won't. I've deleted all macros on the printer, returned the printer to it's factory defauts, and cycled the power. None of these worked.

I appreciate any input.

TIA
Jim Kauffman

 

[DansDadUK]

An obvious difference is (I believe) that the LJ1300 is a monochrome device, whilst the LJ4600 is a colour printer.

We'd need to know a lot more about your macros before being able to offer detailed advice; for example:

(a) How are the macros created? With a printer driver? If so, which one?
(b) If a macro is created from such a print file, is this 'cleaned' to remove sequences which should not be present in macros?
(b) How are the macros downloaded? What commands are used to 'top and tail' the macro to identify it as such in the download?

 

[jknt]

a)I've used both an HP lj5 and an HP ljIII printer driver. Same problem exists for macros created with either driver when executed on the lj4600 printer. However, these same macros function flawlessly when sent to my lj1300 and to an lj4650.

b)Yes, I've cleaned up the start and end of the macros to rid them of unecessary pcl data. Below is a copy of the beginning and end of a typical "cleaned" macro created with the lj5 printer driver-- ("." represents ESC char)

Beginning sequence
.E.&f0s6y0X.*t600R.&u600D.*r0F.&l8c1E.*p0x0Y.*c0t5760x9840Y.*b0M.*v0N.*v0O.*l204O.*p819Y.*r900s2712T.*r1A

Ending sequence
.*rC.*v0o0T.*c0Q.&f1s1X.&f6y10X.E

c)I'm downloading the macros using "copy /b xxxxx.prn xprn"
where "xxxxx.prn" is the macro file and "xprn" will be "prn" for my locally attached printer or "\\bos\printername" for either the hp4600 or hp4650 network attached printers.

 

[DansDadUK]

At a brief glance, your methodology and sequences would appear to be OK; a more in-depth analysis would require a copy of your macro download file.

But why not use the LJ1300 and/or LJ4600 drivers to create the original print files?

It used to be the case (before colour devices became commonly available) that you could use any driver from one generation of PCL printers and it would produce the same output on another printer of the same generation.

With colour devices, this appears to be much less the case (it seems different printers handle colour matching in different ways) so it is much better to go for the associated driver. This is even beginning to be noticed with monochrome printers, which now offer a much greater grey-scale range than earlier devices (e.g. LJ4200 will not print some (old) macros which print OK on LJ4Si, although it is more often the other way around).

 

[jknt]

DansDadUK

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll give it a try.


Jim K