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From: twong@civil.ubc.ca (Thomas Wong)
Newsgroups: comp.periphs.printers
Subject: Found a bug in all Laserjets (??)
Message-ID: <1991Mar12.201750.28016@unixg.ubc.ca>
Date: 12 Mar 91 20:17:50 GMT
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Organization: Dept. of Civil Engineering, U.B.C., Vancouver, B.C., Canada
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Originator: twong@civil.ubc.ca
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We've been having funny problems with our Laserjets (from Laserjet IIs
to Laserjet III) all these years and I think we've finally found what 
is wrong. We have a lab of computers and every once in awhile, 
the Laserjet would stop printing graphics (regardless of program). 
It would either come out with a blank sheet or a 21 ERROR.
We've tried rebooting (computer & printer) all sorts of things. So
what we've adapted to doing is label that printer as text printer
only until the graphics comes back. This has been happening on all
Laserjets so we know it's not a problem with one printer. So finally,
one guy saw a pattern. And after many tests, we found the problem.
If someone sets a landscape font on the Laserjets panel, or sets
orientation=L on Laserjet III, the graphics no work. And since Lotus
123 is used extensively here, printing of worksheet in landscape mode
is a common thing. Then when someone sets thing back to portrait on
the printer side, things work again. We've tested this on all our
Laserjets and the same thing happens (some have garbage printout
instead of blank sheet or 21 ERROR though). So I think we've found
a bug in the way Laserjet does things. I can't see why this won't
work. And I can't understand why it hasn't been detected/fixed by
Laserjet III. Can others please confirm this bug?

On Laserjet II, choose a landscape font on panel (something like I12
would do), then print graphics with your favorite graphics program 
(not word processor which somehow works!)

On Laserjet III, choose orientation=L, then print graphics using your
favorite graphics program (again not word processor).

Then we can decide to flame HP or not. ;)

Thomas.