very slow printing

Hello,

I used SuSe 8.2 together with an old but perfectly working HP LaserJet IIIP
PCL5. All worked fine.

Now I have installed SuSE 10.0 with the CUPS printing system. My problem is
now that printing with this old piece of hardware is extremely slow: it
takes about 25 minutes per page. The CPU activity is normal, i.e. the
printing does not occupy the processor. First I thought that I have had
installed the wrong driver and *.ppd file, because nothing happened when I
started to print a page except that the lights on the the printer showed up
indicating that there was something sent to the printer.
Only occassionally I noticed after a lunch break that printing works but
far too slow. Does anyone know how to speed up printing? I just know one
answer: Buy a postscript printer. But I cannot believe that this is the
only way out.

Thanks in advance for any helpful suggestions.

Stefan Welke

spwelke@aol.com wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I used SuSe 8.2 together with an old but perfectly working HP LaserJet
> IIIP PCL5. All worked fine.
>
> Now I have installed SuSE 10.0 with the CUPS printing system. My problem
> is now that printing with this old piece of hardware is extremely slow: it
> takes about 25 minutes per page. The CPU activity is normal, i.e. the
> printing does not occupy the processor. First I thought that I have had
> installed the wrong driver and *.ppd file, because nothing happened when I
> started to print a page except that the lights on the the printer showed
> up indicating that there was something sent to the printer.
> Only occassionally I noticed after a lunch break that printing works but
> far too slow. Does anyone know how to speed up printing? I just know one
> answer: Buy a postscript printer. But I cannot believe that this is the
> only way out.
>
> Thanks in advance for any helpful suggestions.
>
> Stefan Welke
I too have an HP LaserJet IIIP with PCL5. When I upgraded 8.2 -> 9.0 -> 9.2
and then installed 10.0 as a new installation there was no detectable
change in printing speed. I usually get close to 4 ppm.
I regrettably do not have the experience to analyse your problem but I am
sure it can be solved without buying a new printer.

> spwelke@aol.com wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > I used SuSe 8.2 together with an old but perfectly working HP LaserJet
> > IIIP PCL5. All worked fine.
> >
> > Now I have installed SuSE 10.0 with the CUPS printing system. My problem
> > is now that printing with this old piece of hardware is extremely slow: it
> > takes about 25 minutes per page. The CPU activity is normal, i.e. the
> > printing does not occupy the processor. First I thought that I have had
> > installed the wrong driver and *.ppd file, because nothing happened when I
> > started to print a page except that the lights on the the printer showed
> > up indicating that there was something sent to the printer.
> > Only occassionally I noticed after a lunch break that printing works but
> > far too slow. Does anyone know how to speed up printing? I just know one
> > answer: Buy a postscript printer. But I cannot believe that this is the
> > only way out.
> >
> > Thanks in advance for any helpful suggestions.
> >
> > Stefan Welke
> I too have an HP LaserJet IIIP with PCL5. When I upgraded 8.2 -> 9.0 -> 9.2
> and then installed 10.0 as a new installation there was no detectable
> change in printing speed. I usually get close to 4 ppm.
> I regrettably do not have the experience to analyse your problem but I am
> sure it can be solved without buying a new printer.


It's me again!

I occasionally found the solution to my printing problem: I had to change
the BIOS setting for the parallel port mode from "ECP+EPP" to either
"NORMAL" or "BI-DIR". Now the printer works as usual: Not too fast in spite
of its age but not that slow as with the wrong setting.
By the way: I learned a lot about the CUPS printing system, ppd-files,
postscript and PCL printer language and so on. It took me two days of hard
work to find out what is nowhere to find in the documentations or on
linuxprinting.org.

Stefan Welke

spwelke@aol.com wrote:
....
>
> It's me again!
>
> I occasionally found the solution to my printing problem: I had to change
> the BIOS setting for the parallel port mode from "ECP+EPP" to either
> "NORMAL" or "BI-DIR". Now the printer works as usual: Not too fast in spite
> of its age but not that slow as with the wrong setting.
> By the way: I learned a lot about the CUPS printing system, ppd-files,
> postscript and PCL printer language and so on. It took me two days of hard
> work to find out what is nowhere to find in the documentations or on
> linuxprinting.org.

I recommend the Official Samba-3 HOWTO and Ref. Guide 2nd Ed. (seriously). You'll
learn more about CUPS there than any other resource I've found.

ISBN 0-13-188222-8

I had the same problem and found that it was due to the parport_pc driver
dropping down into a polling mode. You can change this back to interrupt
driven by editing your /etc/modprobe.conf (or /etc/modprobe.conf.local)
file. Check the main file first since this is where YAST makes updates.

You want an entry like this:
# Setup parallel port to non-polling mode.
# io_hi = (io + 0x400) ; linux does not use DMA
options parport_pc io=0x378 irq=7 io_hi=0x778 dma=none

You will probably need to "mkinitrd" and reboot. Check the "dmesg" output
and search for lp0. You should see something like this:
lp0: using parport0 (interrupt-driven).

-Eric