[rescue] LaserJet II printing problems

[Dave McGuire]

On April 15, wlewis at mailbag.com wrote:
> My Epson inkjet that was running fine under CUPS died recently, so I started 
> looking for a different printer. Over the weekend I scored an old LaserJet II 
> (1.5 mb and no font carts) with a still good toner in it and one unused one for 
> $25.00. Cleaned up the feed assembly, switched it to parallel I/O, and it self 
> tests (with test page printing) just fine.

  Cool!  These things will last forever if properly maintained.

> However, if I attempt to use CUPS to print via it's laserjet driver, I get a 
> black smear instead of text. The plain Solaris print system prints ascii just 
> fine, but as it's not a postscript printer all I can get from StarOffice (for 
> example) is a very pretty print out of postscript source code - not too useful. 
> I've also tried to get Gimp-Print running, but while it builds fine, it won't 
> install correctly for me. 

  Install ghostscript and set it up as a print filter.  I've never done
that under Solaris in particular, but it shouldn't be too difficult.
Alternatively, an LJII Postscript cartridge should be cheap these
days; take a look on eBay.

         -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire              "Hush and eat your vegetables, young lady!"
St. Petersburg, FL                          - Mr. Bill