Printer problems, again

[BobDavis]

I just replaced my old Brother HL-660 laser printer with a new HL-5340D. It has Epson emulation and a parallel cable option so after some programming changes for position it works as before, that is except for one glitch.

Most of my printing is done from the multi-purpose (MP) tray, like deposit slips, checks, envelopes, invoices, etc.--always one at a time and sized in the MP tray. There is no DOS driver for this printer and all printer settings in Windows are set to "Auto" for tray preference. That means that if the paper is inserted in the MP tray it should print from there, but maybe 20% of the time it doesn't sense the paper and feeds the paper from the bottom tray instead. I can't find a pattern to this behavior and Brother tech support says they don't support DOS apps. It's a major inconvenience because I don't have a "repeat print" option in my programs for these cases.

Any ideas on how to get the printer to be more reliable would be helpful. TIA.

 

[JRB-Bldr]

We have to assume that you are talking about your application being one of Foxpro-DOS versions.

Can you get your hands on a Programming Command Language (PCL) document for this specific printer (or its printer family)?

That document should tell you how to programatically select one tray or the other from within your application by sending the correct PCL command string to the printer itself.

Then modify your FPD code to specifically select the appropriate tray for the individual document types.

Or modify your code to give it a "repeat print" option.

Good Luck,
JRB-Bldr

 

[mmerlinn]

You can ask PCL questions in the PCL forums once you get to that point.

mmerlinn

http://mmerlinn.com

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