9 Jun
2004
9 Jun
'04
10:46 a.m.
Hi everyone,
In my search for what would be the best laser printer for me, I'm
currently thinking about DEC LPS17, aka Digital PrintServer 17.
A DEC dealer close to me is willing to sell me one for a reasonable
price, and it seems like a really cool printer: just like the
LPS40/20/32 monsters, but fits on a tabletop.
Like all Digital PrintServers, it has a built-in VAX CPU running the
PostScript interpreter. However, the firmware image for this VAX,
containing the PS interpreter and everything else, does not reside in
ROM but is instead down-line loaded on powerup over Ethernet, I presume
via MOP. So it needs a MOP server on the network serving its firmware
image. I can set up a MOP server, but I don't have the LPS firmware
image.
So here comes my first question to the list: does anyone have an LPS
firmware image or is one publicly available on some archive site?
DEC docs seem to imply that the firmware is the same for all LPS'es, is
this true or not? I need an image that can run on LPS17 as that's the
only LPS I can get.
Second question. It is my understanding that once an LPS has booted its
firmware, it becomes an independent node on the network accepting print
jobs from anywhere on the network. Is this true or not? The protocols
it speaks are DECnet and TCP/IP, right? If so, how does it obtain its
DECnet and IP addresses? And if I want only one of the two, how do I
configure it? Does it down-line load a configuration file from the MOP
server along with the firmware image specifying DECnet and IP addresses?
What is the format of this file?
Third question. It is my understanding that the protocol spoken over TCP/IP
is extremely simple: no LPR/LPD or anything like that, just a simple TCP
port, you connect to it and everything sent to that TCP port goes to the
PostScript interpreter's %stdin, and this port is 170. Is my understanding
correct? If so, that's perfect, that's exactly what I want, I don't want
it to do any spooling or other lpd-level intelligence, I want my 4.3BSD
server to do all that, with a raw PostScript over Ethernet connection to
the LPS.
Fourth question. Is this PostScript-over-Ethernet connection on TCP port
170 binary clean, or is 0x04 (^D) interpreted as end of one PS job and
beginning of the next? In other words, does my lpd on the 4.3BSD host
driving it need to send a 0x04 between print jobs or should it close the
TCP connection and reopen it instead?
Fifth question. Is there any access control mechanism by which LPS firmware
can be configured to accept connections only from certain sources, or will
it always accept connections (and print jobs) from the entire Universe?
TIA for any help,
MS
15 Jun
15 Jun
8:38 p.m.
http://www1.sqp.com/MasterIndex/installation_guide/installation_guide_00583…
has an install guide for the host sw.
msokolov(a)ivan.Harhan.ORG (Michael Sokolov) writes:
PostScript interpreter. However, the firmware image
for this VAX,
containing the PS interpreter and everything else, does not reside in
ROM but is instead down-line loaded on powerup over Ethernet, I presume
via MOP.
The LPS20's, LPS32's and LPS40's I used to run indeed worked via MOP.
According to http://h71000.www7.hp.com/wizard/wiz_5960.html,
an LPS17 can also boot via bootp.
So here comes my first question to the list: does
anyone have an LPS
firmware image or is one publicly available on some archive site?
I probably have something (tk50 or cd) that has VMS LPS sw on it,
and I might have ultrix or osf/1-digitalunix-tru64,
but I'm not at all sure when I'd have time to dig it out.
It might well be on a dec consolidated sw distro if you could find
one; lots of people (perhaps including your local dec dealer...)
should have those, and be able to check the T.O.C. for you. In
addition to the OS image, there is a remote console program.
They seem to have sold the host sw for aix, hp-ux, sunos, solaris,
and some flavor of windows in addition to vms, ultrix, and osf/1-digitalunix-tru64.
DEC docs seem to imply that the firmware is the same
for all LPS'es, is
this true or not? I need an image that can run on LPS17 as that's the
only LPS I can get.
The images are different.
Only the LPS 17, 17/600, and 32 Plus could do Level 2 postscript.
Different machines had different cpu bus interfaces, ethernet
controllers, and numbers of input and output trays, and they were
based on at least three very different print engines. The 17/600 could
do 600dpi, while the 40 certainly could not, and the 17's also had HP
PCL5 ROMs in them, although I do not know if you could use the machine
as a pcl printer without going thru a network boot first.
Second question. It is my understanding that once an
LPS has booted its
firmware, it becomes an independent node on the network accepting print
jobs from anywhere on the network. Is this true or not?
yep.
though having a console and logging host isn't bad.
... The protocols
it speaks are DECnet and TCP/IP, right?
The 17 certainly does both, I'm not sure the 40 ever did IP.
... If so, how does it obtain its
DECnet and IP addresses? And if I want only one of the two, how do I
configure it? Does it down-line load a configuration file from the MOP
server along with the firmware image specifying DECnet and IP addresses?
What is the format of this file?
Yep, it downloads a config file.
I'm not sure of the format, but the sw kit that contains
the firmware images and console program has a program that generates it.
Third question. It is my understanding that the
protocol spoken over TCP/IP
is extremely simple: no LPR/LPD or anything like that, just a simple TCP
port, you connect to it and everything sent to that TCP port goes to the
PostScript interpreter's %stdin, and this port is 170. Is my understanding
correct?
Varies by model, I'm pretty sure. See
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/wizard/wiz_3960.html
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/wizard/wiz_4045.html
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/wizard/wiz_3960.html
implication seems to be that the 17 does raw postscript on port 2501,
plus also speaking lpd at the usual place, and that port 170 is used
by a magic dec printer protocol that might or might not be raw postscript
with some wrapper and escape sequences added.
Fourth question. Is this PostScript-over-Ethernet
connection on TCP port
170 binary clean, or is 0x04 (^D) interpreted as end of one PS job and
beginning of the next? In other words, does my lpd on the 4.3BSD host
driving it need to send a 0x04 between print jobs or should it close the
TCP connection and reopen it instead?
I would think that it would have to be binary clean, because otherwise
a control-d in some eps file would trash the connection; if one is speaking
postscript, I would expect a /showpage or somesuch to be end of job.
Of course, the implementation could be brain-dead, but I would hope not,
since they likely had postscript printer people making these things,
and not the rather iffy ultrix folks.
Fifth question. Is there any access control mechanism
by which LPS firmware
can be configured to accept connections only from certain sources, or will
it always accept connections (and print jobs) from the entire Universe?
Seems to be allow and deny lists for decnet and ip.
--akb
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