www.virtualacorn.co.uk/forum

Everything has been going well until today, when I tried to print from the emulator to my printer connected to the iBook. Nothing happens.
I set the printer up as per the instructions and that seem to go well with no complaints, so I then tried to print from !Fireworkz Pro. The hour glass came up as usual, and after a few seconds disappeared with no complaints, and it obviously seemed to think it had finished, but there was no reaction from the printer at all. Not even a sound or flick of the l.e.d.
So I checked the Mac side and found in the printer queue a line saying VRPC print finished! So the print was transferred to the Mac side and was accepted, but without sending it to the printer, yet it considered it completed for some reason.
I tried again with VRPC running in a small window so I could watch the Mac side, and it did exactly the same again. There was no error or problem on the Mac side, but there was no printing either, yet afterwards the print queue states VRPC print completed!
Very strange. Any ideas? Thanks.
I am running an HP990Cxi deskjet via its USB connection.
Apps on the the Mac print fine.
Roy

Do any other RISC OS applications print?
What printer driver (PDF) are you using inside RISC OS?

Sorry for the delay in answering, I have been ill.
I use the normal HP deskjet PDF for my printer (it is a renamed 850 which works fine with my 990Cxi).
It doesn't matter if I try to print from FireWorkz Pro, Ovation Pro, Techwriter, or the basic Edit provided with RISC OS, the effect is the same. No errors on the VRPC side and none on OSX, but there is no reaction from the printer and the completed jobs list shows VRPC print job as finished.
In between two VRPC jobs I tried a print from OSX and that printed fine, so there is nothing wrong there.
Roy

You'll have to give me a ring when you are in front of the computer. I have no idea what could be wrong so we will have to go through it all.

When would be best Aaron? I am working during the day obviously, like you, except that is when I expect you to want me to call. I have not been able to arrange anything these last few weeks.
However, I may have some time later this week. Thanks.

Normal office hours are 10 till 5 Monday to Friday. Although we have had phone problems recently - these should now be fixed (hopefully).

[quote="Aaron]Normal office hours are 10 till 5 Monday to Friday. Although we have had phone problems recently - these should now be fixed (hopefully).[/quote]
The problem is I leave before 08.00 and don't get in until after 18.00! I tried to get through Thursday but no luck!
As I am a diagnostician by trade, and fairly well up on computers, I've already tried some things, but with no success. Using Safari if you put http://127.0.0.1:631/printers/ in the URL line and enter you get the Printers on localhost - CUPS v1.1.23 (that :631 in the URL, is that the port for printing? Is VRPC sending to that port?)
Now this shows the following for my HP deskjet:
Description: DJ990Cxi
Location: iBook
Printer State: idle, accepting jobs.
Device URI: file:///dev/null
Does this suggest the problem may be that files are not passed to the printer? I can find no way to alter it. Obviously since anything sent from the Mac side prints fine, we know it works set like this, but in OS X there is no 'print to file' option like we have in RISC OS, so is this always set to null? Since OS X cannot 'print to file', can it print from a printer file? If VRPC is effectively printing to file then sending this to OS X, but OS X cannot handle this type file...
If I select Jobs (in CUPS) and try to restart a completed VRPC job, I get 'Error: client-error-not-possible'. A test page from CUPS prints fine.
How do you print from VRPC? To what Printer? I believe HP printers use some odd USB modules since they were not strictly correct USB compliant. Unfortunately I have no other printer to try. There is one other option maybe.
In OS X you always get the option to 'print' to pdf - this actually saves an Acrobat pdf of whatever you wished to print. If I could get the VRPC !Printers to send whatever I wished to print, to a pdf via this OS X print option, I could then print the pdf from the Mac side, as well as being very useful in making pdf's! I cannot see how to set the printer driver to default to printing to pdf, maybe it's not possible. I have tried setting up an Adobe printer 'AdobePDF7' which OS X offers (maybe this is the print to pdf default option?) which VRPC recognises, and tried that, but again no error, but no pdf file.
I don't know if this helps you any further. Is it possible you can suggest anything else I could try/check?
Thanks.

Sorry about not getting through on Thursday. That's the day the phone lines finally packed up completely. BT have now "tightened the lose connection" that's been causing problems for months and the phone's should be OK.
With regard to the printing problem:
What RISC OS Printer Definition File are you using?
What printers are reported by ShowPrinters?
What path are you printing to inside RISC OS?
(HostFS::xxxxx)
Have you really set up Printers as per the VRPC manual?

Please Aaron, I have pointed out my skills with computers to help stop these type questions. If it was that simple I would have already fixed it myself. You asked what driver I was using in your first answer and I replied in my first reply.



AdobePDF and
DJ990Cxi



HostFS::DJ990Cxi obviously, although I have set the AdobePDF as default on the Mac and set that in VRPC too as I've pointed out, and tried it to see what happens. As I reported it is the same. No errors but no print, just a record in the Jobs list as complete.


Of course. It was the first thing I checked. If the name is not correct in the connection dialogue box, it gives an error anyway, which I found by trying something different.
You can also see that it is transferring to the Mac side since it appears in the Jobs list as completed and there are no errors reported from either system.
What about the Device URI report from CUPS which shows file:///dev/null for the printer. Does yours show the same? What about the port 631? I'm sure I saw briefly one time a report indicating the print was sent to 127.0.0.1:0 although I have been unable to repeat whatever I did that showed this. I am still trying and if I see it I will certainly tell you. Does this indicate the program is overriding the port and sending it to the wrong place? I don't think it does as I would expect an error, but maybe not?
This software is beta and I thought you wanted good feedback. I had hoped I was providing it, since when I look at the other items in the forum, there doesn't seem to be much from others unless they are all emailing you direct. I am using my copy quite a lot and so far except for this printing problem it is good. Yes there are small faults like the mouse menu button, but they can be got around. I understand I could change the button ops. but I prefer to keep the buttons correct for RISC OS since I am so familiar with it, so I generally use it in full screen mode. I prefer this anyway as the iBook has a max. res. of 1024 x 768 so in window mode I need to reduce VRPC to 800 x 600 which is too small.
I have used Acorn computers and RISC OS from the beginning and in a semi-professional capacity, meaning I (and my friend) tend to push our computers and software to their limits far more than most, and discuss problems and work out solutions.
You didn't say what printer you are using, and whether the CUPS report show the same as mine, because if not, this could indicate where the fault lies. I am trying to solve the problem too but I need some information to help me find out why you apparently can print and I can't. No one else has even made a comment about whether theirs does, or doesn't, or what printers they are using, or even what version of !Printers. In other forums I participate in the feedback is far greater.
If you are using a laser printer, have you tried a deskjet? Since lasers contain a computer and work differently, could it be they work as you send a file to them and let them get on with it, whilst the direct feeding type method from a deskjet does not? These are some of the questions that might lead to an answer...
I don't doubt you know a lot more than me about computers/software/VRPC but lets get past the basics please and try to figure out why it is not working as intended. Thanks.
Roy

Sorry for the delay in responding I have been going through the old support logs to see if we have a similar problem on file. I can only find one, but that didn't get solved, the problem just "went away".
Dealing with your posting in further detail:
I will ask simple questions because, as you discover when you are running tech support, the best approach is to start at the beginning and carefully work you way through the process without making any assumptions as to which bits are OK and which bits aren't.
It's not obvious which HostFS path is being printed to as I don't know what name is being returned by the Mac printer driver. So I ask. If you don't want me to ask questions then I am not going to be able to help.
I also think it would be best if this went over to e-mail. I've had no other printer faults reported on the Mac VRPC so far but there are more things we need to test before diving off at random tangents. The printing system on VRPC is fairly straightforward and as far as I can see seems to be working. At the moment what we have seems to point to the Mac deciding to reject the data presented to it for some reason.
So we need to set up some tests to check the data.
Can you therefore drop me an e-mail and let me know:
How you can be sure the RISC OS Printer Definiton File is OK with your printer e.g. has it been used on a RiscPC?
Which version of !Printers is being used?
Best e-mail address to use is the support one.

Aaron
me too I think.
On the Mac I have the default printer as Epson Stylus Color 740 (USB).
The print Q interleaves Mac and VRPC print jobs but only the Mac ones result in paper output.
On the VRPC the PDF driver is Inactive and the 740 active as per your recipe (barring any errors on my part). A samll file dragged to print is eaten silently by the '740' printer driver icon. However explicit dialogue print results in error:
Printer 'PDF' does not support text printing (10975)
Similarly Ovation Pro mentions PDF and in fact starts Taborca on printing to generate PDF. (as does !Paint) Why it does this wen the printer should be the 740 I am puzzled. I don't think the 740 is a PDF device, is it?
However perhaps this reveals to you what is going astray (again, assuming I have set up correctly?) and therefor may help move the issue on.
I will continue to fiddle.
Printers+ 1.91a, the 740 (800 def file from your disk)

PS
I removed the Adobe PDF definition file (print to file) completely to leave only the aforementioned 740 file known to Printers. From memory, the IconBar icon went to beige rather than grey? Anyhow it now prints with the 740 driver (not PDF/Taborca) but still no printout (though Mac Q shows fresh completed entry).

Just discovered the 'error log & history' facility for the Printer.
Here is the log for one of my invisible prints:
Saturday, 29 December 2007 19:24:12 Europe/London
I [29/Dec/2007:19:24:34 +0000] [Job 63] Adding start banner page "none".
I [29/Dec/2007:19:24:34 +0000] [Job 63] Adding job file of type application/vnd.cups-raw.
I [29/Dec/2007:19:24:34 +0000] [Job 63] Adding end banner page "none".
I [29/Dec/2007:19:24:34 +0000] [Job 63] Queued on "EPSON_Stylus_COLOR_740" by "*****".
I [29/Dec/2007:19:24:34 +0000] [Job 63] Started filter /usr/libexec/cups/filter/gziptoany (PID 128)
I [29/Dec/2007:19:24:35 +0000] [Job 63] Completed successfully.

Can you please put the PDF printer driver (Taborca) back in place. Then check it prints a PDF file correctly - then check the Mac can open the PDF file and finally that the Mac can print it.

Aaron
OK
I got the iconbar icon back to a buff (active) PDF, printing to file PrintOut/PDF in the root of hard disc 4 as per your manual. A fresh PDF was made by Taborca (after a reboot I think) from an Ovation Pro file (2 pages).
Back on the Mac I was able to preview this and print to Epson OK.
A small draw file also worked.
Hey, Happy New Year
C.