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Printer Types

Every printer can print a pre-defined number of fonts, styles, and sizes.
Fonts refer to the design of a character. Styles refer to bold, italics, underline etc. Size refer to how big or small the character is going to be printed.

Printer  Connections

Every computer has connectors called ports where you can attach peripheral devices like printers, mouse, modems, scanners etc. Mainly there are three kind of ports, parallel ports, serial ports and SCSI ports. Parallel ports use different connecting cables than serial ports.

Printer Controls

A printer can be controlled either from the front panel buttons or from within a software program like a word processor.

The front panel buttons can set the way the printer will print on paper, like the lines per page or per inch, the characters per line or per inch, dimensions of paper etc.

A software program provides the user with a utility called a printer driver. The printer driver can be accessed through the program's print menu and it is usually called something like Printer Setup, or Print Definition etc.

The printer driver allows you to access all the features of the printer you have selected to print on and it should override any existing settings from the printer's front panel. Unfortunately some printer drivers are not programmed well for particular printers and fail to override previous printer settings. If from within your word processing program you have selected an incompatible printer driver for the printer you are connected to, then the printed output can be anything from garbage to blank pages.

Screen Versus Printer Output

All DOS programs are text based, thus there is no relationship between what you see on your screen and what the printed page will look like! Some programs offer a page preview function where you can see how your document will look on the printed page.

All Windows programs are graphics based, thus what you see on your screen is what you get on the printed page. (WYSIWYG = What You See Is What You Get).

In a graphics based program you can see all fonts, styles, sizes and graphics on your screen as they will print on paper. In a text based program you cannot see different fonts or graphics on your screen, but they will be printed on paper.

Network Printing
Network Printer Definitions

In a network environment we can have the following kind of printers:

1. Standalone printers

2. Remote printers

3. Printers connected to a dedicated print server

4. Printers connected directly to the file server

Standalone printers are directly connected via a printer cable to a single computer. A standalone printer is accessible only to the user of the computer that is directly connected to it.

Remote printers are connected to a workstation and their availability is broadcasted to all network users who have rights to access the printers (not in use at Chaminade).

Printers connected to a dedicated print server are connected to the network backbone via a print server box and are accessible to any user from any location that has access rights to the network (most of Chaminade printers fall under this category).

Printers connected directly to the file server are accessible by any user on the network but have to be located next to the file server (not in use at Chaminade).

How Does it Work?

On the file server there is a program running at all times called the Print Server. This program acts as the director of all printing activities on the network and it can serve up to sixteen printers.

The network supervisor creates Print Queues (places to hold all data to be printed) and Printer Configurations (how a printer is configured and how it should respond). Every network user is assigned a default print queue where all his/her printing will be redirected automatically. Then every configured network printer is assigned to a print queue. We can assign one print queue per printer, or several queues to one printer, or several printers to one print queue!

The data that a user sends to be printed is called a Print Job. The data is Captured by the network and instead of going directly to the printer port selected (LPT1 or COM1 etc.) it goes to a particular print queue on the file server and waits there until all conditions are met for the data to be printed. When the printer assigned to that particular print queue is ready to print, the data is printed. All print queues are basically subdirectories on the file server and all print jobs are temporary files inside the print queue subdirectory! A print job will wait into a queue until it prints or until the network supervisor stops the print server from running at the file server. (It may wait for months!).

Example: User Hamlet is ready to start working on his workstation preparing a memo of anger because his word processor is not WYSIWYG! But how is he going to print? To print or not to print? That is the question. The ghost of Bill Gates (CEO of Microsoft) appears and guides him step by step.

1. From your main menu select PRINTER SELECTION MENU.

2. Choose Select Default Print Job Configuration.

3. From the list of available printer configurations select the one your heart desires. (Hamlet chose LaserJet IV at the Office_of_Revenge).

4. Press Esc and answer yes to all questions. Now you have targeted the printer of your choice.

5. Start your word processor (or what ever program you intent to use).

6. Go to the Printer Setup menu (or what ever printing utility menu your program provides) and make sure that you choose the appropriate printer driver (in Hamlet's case it would be LaserJet IV).

7. Make sure that the printer you have targeted is On and On Line and it has paper.

8. Send your print job to be printed.

(After all that, user Hamlet preferred to go to the office of the network manager where he uttered the last famous words " Yannis, my printer does not print! ").

The PCONSOLE (Netware) Utility

In order to delete a print job sent to a print queue that you do not want to be printed, you use the PCONSOLE command.

To use PCONSOLE do the following:

1. Press Esc to exit your menu and at the prompt enter the command pconsole.

2. From the pconsole menu choose Print Queue Information.

3. Select the print queue you want to access and press enter. You see a list of all print jobs waiting to be printed.

4. Highlight the print job you want to delete and press the Del key.

5. If the print job you attempt to delete is processed at that time, you will be asked to verify your selection. Just say yes.

6. Press Esc several times to exit PCONSOLE.

7. At the prompt indicating your personal network subdirectory enter the command START to return to your menu.

Note: When you delete a print job from a print queue, as the job is printing, do not expect the printer to immediately stop printing. Every printer has a memory buffer and the buffer holds data already sent to the printer from the print queue. If you want to stop cold turkey, you have to turn temporarily the printer off so everything in the memory buffer is erased.
If you use Windows 95 you do not have the menu choices mention above. In order to change printer drivers or print queues, you need to go to the printers folder, select the appropriate printer icon, go to properties, go to capture settings and select the appropriate print queue to capture your print jobs.

 

Last modified: January 10, 2005
Yannis Grammatis