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Connecting Laserwriter II (& others) to modern network?

Johnnya101

Well-known member
Made a little more progress. Turns out I mixed up drivers, and was using a generic post script one. Got one off a Mac os 9 disk for the IIg. I noticed that it seems Apple only planned for these to ever have 8 megs of ram at most, so I changed the byte size and 8 meg options to 32 within the ppd.

The printer now prints from any page, however it only prints two pages no matter what. It will print one page blank, then one with the words:
"ERROR;
rangecheck
OFFENDING COMMAND:
SubFileDecode
STACK:

455024 (This number changes every print)
--nostringinterval--
--nostringinterval--
5"

Any ideas? I have tried with the unedited ppd and the 32 meg updated one, both produce the same results. Here is the log: https://pastebin.com/TFZJzPku

I'll try some other PPDs in the meantime.
 

Johnnya101

Well-known member
I'll gladly post a video once I can get it to print things correctly. It seems like it is printing out postscript errors. Tried with the LW 4/600 driver (Since I know @Fizzbinn got that to work), same issue. I can't stop now, too much invested in this.
 

joshc

Well-known member
Ah sorry, I got a bit too excited then. Didn't read properly. Unfortunately I'm of no help as I have no experience with these at all (I avoid printers at all costs but if I had more space I'd definitely have a LaserWriter II in my collection as my dad had one when I was growing up so I have a bit of fondness for it).
 

Johnnya101

Well-known member
I -think- I may have found the issue, but I am not well-versed in this type of thing, so if anyone is, any and all help would be appreciated. It appears that it is a PAP error, which then causes the pdftopdf filter to fail, which then causes the foomatic-rip filter to fail.

Code:
D [26/Feb/2022:17:22:52 -0500] [Job 7] PostScript option found: PageSize=Letter: \"<</PageSize[612 792]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice\"
D [26/Feb/2022:17:22:52 -0500] [Job 7] Driver does not understand PDF input, converting to PostScript
D [26/Feb/2022:17:22:52 -0500] [Job 7] Storing temporary files in /var/spool/cups/tmp
D [26/Feb/2022:17:22:52 -0500] [Job 7] PID 6870 (/usr/lib/cups/filter/pdftopdf) exited with no errors.
D [26/Feb/2022:17:22:52 -0500] [Job 7] Starting process \"pdf-to-ps\" (generation 1)
D [26/Feb/2022:17:22:52 -0500] [Job 7] /usr/lib/cups/backend/pap: line 359: CUPS_job-uuid=urn:uuid:a1ca8e55-eae9-364b-70f2-5b2eaaaad37f: command not found
D [26/Feb/2022:17:22:52 -0500] [Job 7] /usr/lib/cups/backend/pap: line 360: export: `CUPS_job-uuid\': not a valid identifier
D [26/Feb/2022:17:22:52 -0500] [Job 7] Printer make and model: Apple LaserWriter IIg
D [26/Feb/2022:17:22:52 -0500] [Job 7] Segmentation fault
D [26/Feb/2022:17:22:52 -0500] [Job 7] Cannot process \"<STDIN>\": Unknown filetype.
D [26/Feb/2022:17:22:52 -0500] [Job 7] pdf-to-ps exited with status 139
D [26/Feb/2022:17:22:52 -0500] [Job 7] Process is dying with \"Could not print file <STDIN>
D [26/Feb/2022:17:22:52 -0500] [Job 7] \", exit stat 2
D [26/Feb/2022:17:22:52 -0500] [Job 7] Cleaning up...
D [26/Feb/2022:17:22:52 -0500] [Job 7] PID 6871 (/usr/lib/cups/filter/foomatic-rip) stopped with status 2.

Ideas?

EDIT:

Heres the PAP config file lines causing the error (At least i think these are the ones)
Code:
ParseCUPSOptions()
{
    # We parse the CUPS options, delete occurences of "com.apple.print" in
    # their names, prepend the variable names with "CUPS_", define
    # them as variables and export them

    i="com\.apple\.print\."
        while [ $# -ge 1 ]; do
        VarName=`echo $1 | cut -d"=" -f1 | sed "s|^$i||g;s|\.[nb]\.$||g;s|\.||g"`
        VarValue=`echo $1 | cut -d"=" -f2 | sed "s|\ |\\\\\ |g"`
       this        --> eval CUPS_${VarName}=${VarValue}
   and this     --> eval export CUPS_${VarName}
                shift
        done
}

PAP file also attached. Odd this has worked for others out of the box. This is using the PPD from OpenPrinting for the IIg. I have seen online the real old Apple printers can't use the original PPDs because they are outdated and to just use a new one?
 

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Johnnya101

Well-known member
Sorry to keep bumping this... Just want to put these errors out there and what they mean for people in the future with this issue.

Did some more research. The PAP error is not the issue, it is something else. I switched back to the original Apple PPD, and looked into the OFFENDING COMMAND print again. Found this useful link: http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01643202.pdf

According to that, my error is decoded as wrong paper size, bad objects. So something is not being converted to postscript correctly... If anyone has input, please let me know.
 

NJRoadfan

Well-known member
Your error log from CUPS indicates its cups and cups-filters failing. The print job isn't even getting to the printer.
 

Johnnya101

Well-known member
Your error log from CUPS indicates its cups and cups-filters failing. The print job isn't even getting to the printer.
That would make sense, as the ready light flashes breifly then stops. The stdin unknown filetype I think is the main issue here. I just don't even know where to start to try and fix it ... This is with the newer open printing ppd, which I think is the one I'll try and get going.

Here is an updated snippet of the log.
Code:
D [28/Feb/2022:10:55:02 -0500] [Job 35] File: <STDIN>
D [28/Feb/2022:10:55:02 -0500] [Job 35] ================================================
D [28/Feb/2022:10:55:02 -0500] [Job 35] Filetype: PDF
D [28/Feb/2022:10:55:02 -0500] [Job 35] PostScript option found: PageSize=Letter: \"<</PageSize[612 792]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice\"
D [28/Feb/2022:10:55:02 -0500] [Job 35] Driver does not understand PDF input, converting to PostScript
D [28/Feb/2022:10:55:02 -0500] [Job 35] Storing temporary files in /var/spool/cups/tmp
D [28/Feb/2022:10:55:02 -0500] [Job 35] Starting process \"pdf-to-ps\" (generation 1)
D [28/Feb/2022:10:55:02 -0500] [Job 35] Printer make and model: Apple LaserWriter IIg
D [28/Feb/2022:10:55:02 -0500] [Job 35] Segmentation fault
D [28/Feb/2022:10:55:02 -0500] [Job 35] Cannot process \"<STDIN>\": Unknown filetype.
D [28/Feb/2022:10:55:02 -0500] [Job 35] pdf-to-ps exited with status 139
D [28/Feb/2022:10:55:02 -0500] [Job 35] Process is dying with \"Could not print file <STDIN>
D [28/Feb/2022:10:55:02 -0500] [Job 35] \", exit stat 2
D [28/Feb/2022:10:55:02 -0500] [Job 35] Cleaning up...
D [28/Feb/2022:10:55:02 -0500] [Job 35] /usr/lib/cups/backend/pap: line 359: CUPS_output-bin=face-down: command not found
D [28/Feb/2022:10:55:02 -0500] [Job 35] PID 13629 (/usr/lib/cups/filter/foomatic-rip) stopped with status 2.
 
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Johnnya101

Well-known member
ITS PRINTING!!!!!!

Probably 24 hours worth of fiddling. The solution was one of the first things I tried... in the wrong file.

If you plan on using one of these Laserwriter IIs, you MUST do the following:
1. Stop cups using "sudo systemctl stop cups" in Putty or whatever SSH client.
2. Open remote desktop (Or somehow edit trhough command line), find /etc/cups/printers.conf
3. Add line "Option pdftops-renderer pdftops" under the error policy line (See: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1304869#c12 for more details)
4. Start cups "sudo systemctl restart cups"
5. Hope for the best...

Use the original Apple PPD. It works... somehow.... I did set languagelevel to 1 for this test, but no reason it won't work with 2.

@joshc I made a promise and I will keep it. Video incoming soon. Looks to be the first LaserWriter IIg to work with a modern PC?

Took about 5 minutes to process the windows 10 screenshot below... lol. Prints very clear and crisp. Sorry its upside down, but you get the idea.
20220303_140530.jpg
 

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Johnnya101

Well-known member
Will do, I'll submit a bug report later today.

@joshc As promised, a short video of printing the forum home page. Had to pause it about a minute in because the printer took a good 5 minutes to process it.

No idea on a specific distro. It's whatever MacIP has loaded. Is there an easy way to find out from the command line?
 

Johnnya101

Well-known member
It is:

macipgw@macippi:~ $ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Raspbian
Description: Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
Release: 10
Codename: buster
 

MOS8_030

Well-known member
Very nice! Way to stick with it to the end. Glad my old board found a new home.
I hope it prints plain documents faster.
 

Johnnya101

Well-known member
Very nice! Way to stick with it to the end. Glad my old board found a new home.
I hope it prints plain documents faster.
Yes it does, printed some simple sentence type pages, they process instantly. PNGs and other graphics take forever. But they also take forever from an old Mac, that's just how the printer is. It's a 68k printer, after all.
 
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