Re: Printing to remote printers

["Chick Doe" <Cdoe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

boy is this near and dear to my heart. we've struggled for a long time on 
similar issues, ie supporting as/400 printers at remote locations. and you are 
right, it is an as/400 issue, not a bpcs issue.

when you mention a print server what are you specifically meaning. we have used 
both castelle lan press units and hp jet direct units. these have an ip address 
and can support direct ip printing and novell server based printing. however, 
we have never been able to get the castelle units to support native ip 
printing. 

here are a couple of options.

option 1
 you can define an output queue on the as/400 to accept your query jobs. that's 
easy and normal. now you connect your epson printer to an hp jet direct box at 
the remote site. the jet direct box needs an ip address and you can connect up 
to three printer to it. the printer will have port number 9100, 9101, and 9102. 
then you have to configure the epson printer with a device description on the 
as/400. you cannot let the as/400 auto-configure this printer. you need to 
configure it as a remote ip based printer. in the configuration you will have 
to specify both the ip address of the jet direct box and the port number that 
the printer is plugged into on the jet direct box. then you must start an 
as/400 remote print writer (STRRMTWTR). and if everything is configured 
properly the as/400 will send the jobs from the output queue directly to the 
jet direct box and to the printer. this works, but there is some inconvenience 
with it. since the as/400 thinks that it is sending the print job to a remote 
system it does not allow you to print only selected pages of the report. once 
it start to send the report, it sends the whole report!

option 2
install a client access print session at the remote site and let the as/400 
communicate with that session using tcp/ip. for example, we have many small 
sales offices that need to print as/400 reports, we have a pc dedicated to only 
client access printer sessions. each session is captured to a specific novell 
server queue. thus the as/400 routes the report to the client access printer 
session, which then routes it to a central novell print queue. at the remote 
site we have a castelle or hp print server box configured to print a specific 
novell print queue. once the client access session puts the report into the 
novell queue, the print server box pulls it out of the queue and prints it on 
the remote printer. this works pretty well. if you only have a single printer, 
you could also configure the client access print session on an individuals pc 
and either plug the printer directly into that pc, or capture it to a novell 
queue.

hope that this helps!

chick doe
barton instrument systems

>>> <RickCarter@holley.com> 12/27 3:04 PM >>>
AS400 Mixmode BPCS 6.1

This is more of an AS400 question than a specific BPCS question for you
AS400 guru's.
I have the need to setup IP addressed printers that are not network
printers.  Basically, I've created *RMT outputq's and then attach a printer
to the AS400 using a print server.  The printer server's IP address is the
address I assign the *RMT output queue.

This works fine when printing from BPCS and sending print to a specific
output queue but a true printer device is not defined on the AS400.  So for
instance, in Query,  if I want this query to print to that *RMT output
queue, I can't automatically have the query send the printout there becuase
the query is looking for a printer device name not an ouput queue.  The
output queue will not work in the printer device name since there's not
really a printer device defined for the print server or the output queue.

 The above example occurred when installing an EPSON 5000 wid carriage
printer to our AS400..   This printer was installed across town at another
location where all devices are connected via TCP/IP.  The print server was
used to connect the printer but the only way I know to do this is via the
creation of the remote output queue.  Is there a better way to do this type
of connection.

thanks



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