Scrambled printers on Aloha 5.3 system

[jeromio]

I have 4 terminals and an Aloha 5.3 system with file server (win2000). All of the printers are in a single group and each terminal has a printer attached to serial COM1 (except for Terminal 2 that continuously reboots if a printer is on COM1 so I set that one to COM2).

Here is my problem and this may be hard to follow. Terminal 3 prints just fine. Terminal 2 prints to Terminal 1. Terminal 1 prints the 1st copy of a receipt to Terminal 1 and the 2nd copy goes to Terminal 3. All other printing (reprints, checkouts, reports, etc) are printed to Terminal 1 (as expected). Terminal 4 prints to Terminal 3. There is always an error message that states "Terminal 4 Printer offline".

Terminals 1& 2 are in the same area and 3&4 are in the same area so each of those has the nearby terminal set as backup.

Debugging this problem I can reroute Terminal 1 to print to Terminal 2. So one hack solution might be to just get longer cables and criss-cross the stupid things (although I actually cannot find the RJ11/RJ45 cables that are used).

I have looked thru lots of threads here and have checked port settings and dip switches and I am totally stumped. I am an engineer with 20yrs of h/w & s/w experience, but not that much Aloha experience (only enough to make me want to smash this stuff OfficeSpace style).

Any ideas or suggestions?

 

[alohaakamai3]

You're correct, that was really confusing to follow. I find it makes it much simpler to address problems like this one at a time.

If it were me, here's what I do- a bit of a pain, but will probably save you a lot of time and aggravation in the long run.

1. Under printers in the back office, there's a check box to "automatically reroute" to a back up printer.

I'd uncheck that for now, to eliminate any confusion about what's working or being rerouted, etc.

2. Under Terminals in the back office, there are two settings that allow you to reroute printing- for example, they allow you have a credit card receipt run on term1 instead print to term2. For EACH printer, make those two settings the very same printer that you're currently configuring. That is, if it you're looking that the setup sheet for terminal one, then make sure both of those are set to term1 receipt printer.

3. Take the known good printer, cable, power supply, etc... from term3, and physically connect it to each terminal, one at a time and attempt to print. WRITE DOWN the results. If it works with that printer, you probably have bad hardware somewhere that you can address later. If it doesn't work, it's probably a software configuration issue and you can tackle that one at a time as well.

Don't forget to refresh after you've made your software changes. And also, have some in with manager access in the front of the house make sure none of those receipt printers you're working with are being reroute through the front of house.

Post your results and we can go from there,

 

[jeromio]

For point 1, I can't find such a setting anywhere. Under Hardware->Printers, there are individual settings for each printer and I have set the "Backup" printer to None (00) as in point 2. However I don't see any settings for "credit card", just "Backup" and "Send Non-Checks To:". These are all set to None.

For point 3, I have done that and all my printers do work - if I connect each one in turn to Terminal 3, printing is just fine. Also, all of the routes are "standard" at FOH. That is, Term1->Term1. But like I said, if I change routing such that Term1->Term2, that works and all checks rung up on Term1 print to the Term2 printer and this verifies that the connections and the h/w for Term2 are all good.

Basically this is a s/w or config issue. But nothing I've found in the config suggests that it should behave this way.

 

[jeromio]

Also, it doesn't matter what routing I set in FOH for Term2. It ALWAYS prints to Term1. There's some phantom setting someplace that is unaffected by anything in the UI.

I can't rule out a h/w problem w/ Term4 since nothing ever prints from printers attached to it. Tried all the Comm ports, no change.

 

[alohapier]

if terminal 4 printer is working before, please double check your settings on printer group as well if you have set something on system>events...

if you found nothing there, this may be a cable issue or the printer itself.....try swapping cables and printers

 

[jeromio]

Like I said, I cross checked all the printers against the one terminal (term3) that always prints correctly and they all print (cables stayed with printers). So there is something specific to that particular p1220. But for Term2, something is just borked with the config, but in some hidden way. Same w/ Term1 since it prints the 2nd copy to Term3. I'm just hoping someone here knows about some crazy setting in some hidden, non-obvious cfg or ini or dbf or some such.

 

[alohaakamai3]

Regarding your first reply, Jeromio, the setting I mentioned is under Terminals... my reply was misleading. The first part said under "printers" but in the second part I said under Terminals. I think it says something like Receipt Printer and Voucher Printer.

There's no editing of dbfs or cfg files that you'll need to edit here, however, there may be an off the wall setting like I'm mentioning here. It actually described the behavior you mentioned- only the credit card receipt (or the plain old receipt) printing to an alternate location.

See if you can see that under Terminals, and do not smash the printer behind the building office space style.

 

[pinoytech]

if your printer in Term4 is configured in aloha as Type: epson.. something, make sure there no windows or opos printer defined in the terminal that is assigned to the same COM port.