On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 11:04:59AM +0200, Torfinn Ingolfsen wrote: > On Fri, 21 May 2010 10:29:04 +0200 > Thomas Gellekum <thomas.gelle...@gmx.de> wrote: > > > echo "hallo" > /dev/ulpt0 > > [...] > > Any ideas on how to debug this are welcome. > > Most of todays printers do NOT understand plain text, usually you need a > driver which transforms whatever you want to print into > the language the printer understands. > See http://www.openprinting.org/printer/Brother/Brother-HL-1250 > for more info.
As someone who used to own a Brother MFC-5490CN printer, here are some points/items I came across when trying to get FreeBSD working with it. Note that I did not try USB because I don't use it; I use wired Ethernet/IP, but from the USB errors you see it looks like your situation is the same. - Brother has officially stated they do not support FreeBSD: http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bsc/public_s/id/linux/en/faq_prn.html#5 - Linux emulation will be required. I refused to go down this road, and brandelf(1) is not enough. - Looking through forums and discussion threads for Linux, I found a lot of people encountering what I did: communicating with the printer via IP (specifically LPR mode) worked, but the instant it saw any sort of I/O data, the printer would lock up and require a power-cycle, while showing (if my memory serves me right) "READING" or "COMMUNICATING" on its LCD immediately prior to locking up. - I encountered the same problem when attempting to use its PCL emulation mode. I had no problem telnetting to the printer and doing administrative commands/things, including printing, under Windows -- except, of course, once the unit was locked up. I no longer own the printer in question for reasons unrelated, but the overall experience itself left me so irritated that since purchasing a non-Brother printer I haven't even bothered to try and get FreeBSD to print to it. The fact that one needs "OS drivers" to print to a printer is absolutely preposterous; I don't know when this became the norm, but it wasn't like this in the early-to-late 90s. -- | Jeremy Chadwick j...@parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB | _______________________________________________ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
