Printing with the HP LaserJet 3100/3150 does not work

[Jarno Suni]

Binary package hint: hpijs

Xubuntu 8.10, hpijs 2.8.7

I selected HP LaserJet 3100 LPT parport0 HPLIP with HP LaserJet 3100 Foomatic/hpijs [en] driver in printer installation wizard.
It does not print a test page.

There is more information in https://answers.launchpad.net/hplip/+question/54810 (Read especially my comments.)

[Jarno Suni (jarnos)]

There is a workaround for old Mandrake Linux, but I don't know how to apply it in current (X)ubuntu 8.10:
http://www.kivela.net/jaska/projects/lj3100/

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

Thank you for this report. Unfortunately, according to your own references, this printer is not supported by Xubuntu 8.10. However, it should be supported in Xubuntu 9.04, which has hplip 3.9.2. Have you tried this in Xubuntu 9.04 or 9.10?

According to comment #35:

Information on the HPLIP website is generally more up-to-date and more
accurate than linuxprinting.org. However, in this case, I believe that
support for this device was added in 2.8.10, not 0.9.5. If you have one of
these printers, and can try it under a recent HPLIP version, it would be
helpful if you could report back with your experiences.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Moving to HPLIP upstream, this printer (and also the LJ 3150) is wrongly categorized in HPLIP. It seems that the "hp" backend of HPLIP can exchange data with the printer, but HPIJS and hpcups are not capable of generating the page description language which this printer needs.

A comment in https://answers.launchpad.net/hplip/+question/54810 shows that the printer has the following device ID:

$ sudo /usr/lib/cups/backend/hp
direct hp:/par/HP_LaserJet_3100?device=/dev/parport0 "HP LaserJet 3100" "HP LaserJet 3100 LPT parport0 HPLIP" "MANUFACTURER:Hewlett-Packard;COMMAND SET:HP GDI;MODEL:HP LaserJet 3100;CLASS:PRINTER;DESCRIPTION:Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 3100 MFP;"

The device ID contains the term "COMMAND SET:HP GDI;", This means that this printer does not understand PCL as many other LaserJets do, but only a printer-specific language. HPLIP categorizes the printer as "tech-class=LJMono" in /usr/share/hplip/data/models/models.dat which would mean a PCL 5e printer. This is wrong.

To the HPLIP team: The bug in HPLIP is to claim that printing with this printer is supported by HPLIP, perhaps scanning works (please someone try it), but printing definitely does not work with the printer drivers which come with HPLIP. This is not a PCL 5e printer. Please set the "tech-class" value to the one for unsupported printers or write a driver for it and add it to HPLIP. Do this also for the LaserJet 3150. Also correct your documentation telling that this printer has only parallel connection.

To the original poster and everyone who has a LaserJet 3100 or 3150: Please set up a print queue for this printer with hp-setup. You will not be able to print by simply senbding a job into this queue.

Try to scan with xsane or simple-scan or try to see the status and toner level with hp-toolbox. Does this work?

Try to print using the following command line:

/usr/bin/gs -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -q -sPAPERSIZE=a4 -r600 -sDEVICE=lj3100sw -sOutputFile=- /usr/share/system-config-printer/testpage-a4.ps | lp -o raw

Replace all occurrences of "a4" by "letter" if your paper is Letter-sized. You can print any PostScript or PDF file instead of /usr/share/system-config-printer/testpage-a4.ps.

Please tell here whether this works.

In case of any problems try also different parallel port settings in the BIOS.