We have a Zebra 170 XiIII Thermal p

[ad73]

We have a Zebra 170 XiIII Thermal printer, and are sending labels to the printer in ZPL format. Whenever we send a batch job to the printer we send the ZPL for the Label AND the ZPL for the tru Type fonts each time. every once in a while though after we send the print job tot he thermal printer, the "data" light in the front flashes a couple of times but the label does not print. When I go into Scoadmin to check the status of the print job, the print job just sits ther in the qeue waiting as a sent job. I have to delete the job and re-start the printer , then re-submit the batch whenever this happens. Before I try to delete the print job, I get the following in the "print job manager screen" for example.

"SERVER NAME" sending to "PRINTER SERVER NAME" {} {
JobID= th001-990
Queue= th001
Owner=root
Size = 104193 (varies)
Date/ Time: (varies)
Status: (BLANK)

When I select all Jobs and try to delete them I get an error message that reads:

Warning "SERVERNAME"is not a request ID
Warning th001-990 doews not exisit.

IF I press ok, the job still deletes antyways, but I still have to restart the printer.

I installed the printer the same way as we install any other network printer on our LAN with it's own static IP Address.

Was wondering if anyone has any suggestions as to the cuase and any idea how I may fix the same. Do you think this is a network problem or a result of the fact that I send true type fonts with every batch and the memory gets overloaded.


ANy help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
arif

 

[mrregan]

Hi,
I have had similar problems in the past with label printers, although not on SCO. It sounds like a standard buffer overflow problem which would cause the printer to act as you described. How hard would it be to change your program to only send the fonts once or switch to embedded fonts?

 

[ad73]

Thanks for the post. I also feel that sending the fonts may result in the buffer overflow that you mentioned. I will be trying to re-ceate the label with Zebra's Bar One Lite program and see if I can use printer resident fonts. Will keep you posted.

 

[HIRC]

I had this problem too (in Windows/DOS no less), it appears to have been a Zebra printer firmware problem. Consult your Zebra support folks for the latest firmware for your printer, you may need to update it.

When sending true-type fonts to the printer, the printer engine has to switch between 'ascii mode' and 'binary mode' at the printer. Sometimes the printer fails to switch modes appropriately, which causes the printer to hang (not your print queue). As a result, the print queue also gets hung up... requiring both the printer and the queue to be reset.