banjo Posted May 8, 2005 Report Share Posted May 8, 2005 (edited) I just installed a new Epson C84 printer on my Mandy 9.1. I used Mandrake Control Center, and it went in like hot butter. It works fine right out of the box, but I understand that the Epson utilities in escputils need to have the real printer port supplied, and I cannot find it. Can anybody give me a pointer to where USB printers get installed. Nothing shows up in /dev/usb. My laser printer, through the parallel port, is at /dev/lp0 as expected, but the USB printer location was down in some USB directory somewhere. It flashed by too fast for me to grab it. Dang! Thanks in Advance Linux rocks! Banjo (_)=='=~ Edited May 8, 2005 by banjo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spinynorman Posted May 8, 2005 Report Share Posted May 8, 2005 Go into MCC, select Hardware, then HardDrake - most of your hardware will be displayed. If your printer is not showing, press the Options button at the bottom and select Autodetect printers. Quit HardDrake, then open it again, and the printer should now be there. Click on the printer name to show the details, including the port. Mine's dev/usb/lp0... :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banjo Posted May 8, 2005 Author Report Share Posted May 8, 2005 spinynorman, Thanks for the info. It worked like a champ. I have found it right in /dev/usb/lp0 after all. The issue was really one of old dogs and new tricks. I come from the olden days of Unix when printers were passive bit-buckets that existed because we set them up and then they were just there in /dev. In this case, I had to turn the printer on before it showed up in /dev/usb. When I turn the printer off. Zap. Gonzo again. So I guess I still have a bunch to learn about how USB interacts with Linux. Evidently the device files come and go based on whether or not the device is on. That makes sense considering the hot-swap capabilities of USB. :o I must say, that I am very pleased with the way this printer went onto the system. Mandy autodected the printer, asked me what I wanted to do, hooked it in with gimp-print, and I was up and running. Easier than fnWindows. I did have to tell it that I had a C82 because of my antiquated gimp-print. But it works. Linux rocks! Banjo (_)=='=~ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spinynorman Posted May 8, 2005 Report Share Posted May 8, 2005 My C62 works well - after I realised the man from the shop had plugged it into the RJ-45 socket... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banjo Posted May 8, 2005 Author Report Share Posted May 8, 2005 RJ45 socket? I'm not sure that I could figure out how to do that physically. How big of a hammer do you need to jam the connector into the hole? My only glitch in this thing now is that escputil is telling me that it cannot parse the printer output when I ask for ink levels. I guess the C84 is too new for this software or something. Looking for a solution to that issue. Do you know if it is possible to use *both* the usb and the parallel port on the printer? I have a Win98 sitting here with a parallel cable that I could hook to it and then just do the printer maintenance from there. My Lexmark laser works that way. Banjo (_)=='=~ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spinynorman Posted May 8, 2005 Report Share Posted May 8, 2005 For ink levels, I use mtink, which is under Configuration - Printing. There are some notes at www.linuxprinting.org about escputil and the C84. Can't help you with the usb/parallel port problem - I'm not a techie, just work things out by trial and error... :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banjo Posted May 8, 2005 Author Report Share Posted May 8, 2005 I tried Mtink and it just reports errors communicating with the printer. Thanks for all the help anyway. If I manage to fix this I will report back to this thread what I did. There is a patch available to fix the escputil problem, but it is for 4.2.6 and I have 4.2.5. I also have no idea what to do with the "patch" LOL. It is a .bin file, whatever that means. Do you run it? or copy it someplace? What is a "patch" in Linux? For now, I have a working printer, and this other stuff is optional. The printer will report to me when a cartridge is low, and I can figure out which cartridge it is using the buttons on the front panel of the printer. Linux rocks! Banjo (_)=='=~ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spinynorman Posted May 9, 2005 Report Share Posted May 9, 2005 There is a patch available to fix the escputilproblem, but it is for 4.2.6 and I have 4.2.5. I also have no idea what to do with the "patch" LOL. Use 'man patch' to find out about the patch command. If you use the verbose parameter, you will see what's going on. You also have the option to create a backup in case something goes wrong. If it works, it should fix escputil and mtink. B) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banjo Posted May 10, 2005 Author Report Share Posted May 10, 2005 In case anyone is still interested in this thread I thought that I would post my fix for this problem. I finally did get escputil to read my C84 printer and report the ink levels, and here is what I did. First I read as much as I could online about escputil and mtink and ttink to find out what was going on. According to the chat boards, this is a known problem that is fixed in version 4.2.7 of the gimp-print. I did not want to attempt an upgrade to all of gimp-print in order to fix this one problem because everything else seems to work fine and I don't want it to stop working enitrely from a mismatch ( I have read such horror stories on the web). After all, my Mandy 9.1 is getting a bit old now (2 years!). Finally I downloaded the source code for gimp-print 4.2.7 from sourceforge and took a look at it. It turns out that escputil is pretty much a stand-alone program that rides along with the rest of gimp-print. It would be nice if this program were available separately. I compiled escputil manually using the command: > gcc escputil.c -o escputil (I come from the era of iron men and wooden boats; I don't need no stinkin' makefile ). After some minor modifications that allowed the compiler to find the appropriate include files and get around some minor compile errors, it compiled fine. It runs and works against my C84. The permissions for /dev/usb/lp0 are crw-rw----, so only root has permission to write to the device. I cannot figure out how to change the permissions on this file since it comes and goes automatically when the printer is turned on and off. So I will simply run the program as root. To "install" my version (hack) of escputil I put a shell script wrapper around it called "checkprinterink" which contains the following: #!/bin/sh /usr/local/bin/escputil -i -u -r /dev/usb/lp0 I copied the script and my new escputil binary into /usr/local/bin. To use it I just su to root and type: # checkprinterink and it works. I realize that this is a terrible hack, but short of diving into some serious upgrades to my system, I don't know how else to fix this. If I decide that I need to perform any of the other utility functions that are provided by escputil I will create new scripts to run my program and ensure that I have the switches correct. I did not have to touch any of the installed software to make this work. It is isolated in /usr/local/bin whereas the original escputil is in /usr/bin. I will not distribute this because it is a hack and not suitable for public consumption. However, if you want to try this yourself, feel free. I am probably the only Linux hack on the planet who is too stubborn to do a proper upgrade. Can you imagine even attempting to do something like this in fnWindows? Linux rocks! Banjo (_)=='=~ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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