HP JetDirect EX Plus 3 & NW 4.1

HP JetDirect EX Plus 3 & NW 4.1 - not yet!

by Don Bourri » Sun, 01 Oct 1995 04:00:00

Call me crazy but I believed our H-P vendor and H-P's faxback data sheet for
the JetDirect EX Plus 3 print server claiming that it operated as an NDS
native mode print server.

The manual enclosed with the 5 units I bought for a "get it running now"
project indicated that native NDS support was available for units with
firmware rev D.04.06 or higher. All shipped with rev D.04.03, so I assumed
(stupidly, as it turns out) that I could get a flash update from H-P's ftp
site. Turns out that H-P has been trying to get the firmware out of their lab
since August-ish without success, so be prepared to set these boxes up in
bindery mode for a while yet.

----------------------------------------------------------
Don Bourrie
Network Analyst
Vancouver Hospital & Health Sciences Centre
Vancouver, BC Canada

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1. HP JetDirect EX PLUS 3 client software problem.

I will appreciate any insight anyone can provide about the
following problem.

1) I have 4 computers hooked to a Windows 95
peer-to-peer network which is connected to a HP JetDirect EX
PLUS 3 print server. Normally everything works well and all
of the computers can print to both HP printers (4P and 870)
connected to the JetDirect box from both W95 and DOS
windows.
2) Every few weeks, ONE of the computers (most often a
Toshiba 430 laptop which is in constant use) either a) loses
the ability to print at all to the JD PrintServer printers
or b) DOS jobs lose the ability to print to the JD
printserver printers.
3) If I completely remove the "failed" printer from the
"offending" computer and re-install it, things <almost
always> start working again. (A couple of times I have had
to call HP JetDirect Tech support when a simple re-install
did not work and they have given me a program to run which
<supposedly> clears the registry of any/all JetDirect
related stuff. Then after executing this special program we
have been able to get things installed and running again.)
4) I have had HP JetDirect Tech Support on the phone
maybe eight times about this and all they EVER want to do is
have me remove the "offending" printer(s) on the computer
with problems and re-install. This (so far) has always
"fixed" the problem (except as noted in 3 above) and at that
point,
HP Tech Support gives up and is without a clue as to the
cause of the recurring problem.
5) The manifestation of the problem is: a) any DOS
print job just "hangs forever" and does not print. b) A
"copy <filename> LPT3 (a JD printer) times out with printer
not ready. c) a W95 print job just hangs in the spooler and
never prints. d) EVERY SINGLE parameter that we can see in
the normally accessable parameters appear to be normal and
correct and no value of any setup parameter appears
different from what we see when the printers are working
fine.