PCL Printing on new HP 404 printer

[Greenmet29]

I am sending pcl commands to an hp 404 printer, connected via the USB interface, and the job sits in the queue for an extended period of time, even with the page eject command at the end of the job. I have had this issue now with three different brand new hp 404 printers. The only solution that I have found is changing the connection type to the network interface, which isn't really a good option for a lot of my locations. Does anyone have any ideas about what might fix this issue? Thanks! Nathan

 

[Hugh Hood]

Nathan,

Is there a chance on the 404 model that the default language is port-specific?

In other words, while the Ethernet/network connection may be set to auto-detect (or PCL) among postscript/pdf/pcl, perhaps the USB connection is not set that way?

If port-specific language defaults are not a configuration option on the 404, can you test your PCL jobs by prepending code to them that will specifically switch the language to PCL? You'll need to use PJL to do that, I would imagine.

Just a thought. I've had strange things like this happen in the past to me on some older HP's, and the cause was that each interface (in my case parallel vs. serial) held its own settings.

 

[jbasedata]

I think that as Hugh has suggested, using PJL is sometimes necessary on certain devices. One way I would test this out is by using a common Windows application to generate a simple PCL output, as follows.

1. Change your printer's driver to be a generic PCL5 driver, so that you can ensure a Windows application sending a test document to the printer, will print successfully in PCL. You might for example be able to use the Windows driver for "HP LaserJet 2200 Series PCL5", which is installed already, or find a universal PCL driver.

2. Use Microsoft Word, for example, to create a very simple piece of text. Check that it can print to your printer, using the PCL driver you've selected, to prove that sending PCL via the USB connection is successful.

3. Print it again, but in the print dialogue box, tick the option "Print to File". Capture the output in a file and take a look at it, with a file editing tool, or even just notepad. You will find that it prefixes the output with PJL commands. You can replicate those commands in your own output and copy what was achieved successfully via Word.