Re: Printer Support

We have a vast number of PC printers attached to our AS/400 - Canon, Epson, 
Printronix, brand X - they are in essence connected one of several different 
ways, depending on the end user situation.  Each of our facilities has an IBM 
printer for their main volume of output.

However, in my experience, very few people give serious thought to cost of 
operations.  Spend $200.00 for a PC printer then spend $20,000.00 for the 
life of the printer hassling with getting it to work right.  
Can it handle green bar paper or is it limited to 8 1/2 by 11?
Can it handle heavy duty forms like card stock & multi-copies?
Can it do bar coding accurately enough to be usable?

Many PC printers toss in an extra line of print for purposes of the printer 
gripping the paper, so even when the HOST tells it form dimensions, we have a 
problem with slippage in forms alignment.  I have users constantly coming to 
me requesting programming changes because some form will not line up right on 
their printer.

Al: Which printer did you use to generate this report?
User: What difference does that make - can't you fix the program?
Al: Sorry, it works correctly on other printers - the problem is with YOUR 
PRINTER - if I change this report to work right on your printer, it will mess 
it up for all other printers, you need to get the printer fixed.
User: How do I do that?
Al: We call a PC technician to figure out how to tell it to obey the 
instructions of the HOST when it comes to forms alignment.

Figure on spending a week or so just figuring out how to hook the thing up.
Figure on spending a few months trying to get it to print correctly on 
special forms.
Figure on having it forgetting its settings every few months & you have to go 
through the rat race of refiguring stuff.  I tell my co-workers that we 
absolutly positively need to have a reference document regarding 
configuration data & macro settings & the whole 9 yards on each of these 
things, but of course such info is nowhere to be found every time the printer 
fails again.

Or spend a little more money up front to avoid the hassles.

We buy twinax display stations for $500.00 or so average today & they last 5 
years before the first hassle.  The state of art of PC hardware is several 
decades behind IBM for general stability.  A PC printer is fine for 
occasional printing at some clerk's desk, but if you want the thing to be 
printing all day long of every work day, in the heat & dust of an industrial 
location, better create an office for a live in technician, because you will 
have a lot of service calls.

There are mutli-session twinax monitors in which one session can be a printer 
... the PC printer plugs into the back of the display station just like it 
plugs into a PC & we use the setup of the monitor to say that session # 4 (or 
whatever) of the work station is a printer emulating 5256 or whatever of the 
AS/400 collection supported by that monitor & whatever port address it is on 
the twinax.  This basically costs the $500.00-800.00 for whatever twinax work 
station features you shooting for, and the PC printer of course & it comes 
with the cable & you should be in business, until the next bunch of hassles.

Any PC can be connected to AS/400 via a variety of protocols.  We are using 
both twinax emulation & an external ethernet LAN through Win NT.  In the case 
of twinax emulation, you can get connections as low as $130.00 but I 
reccommend paying a little extra to cut down on the hassles of managing your 
hardware.  The PC has an interface to define the printer to the AS/400 & in 
essence is telling the AS/400 what AS/400 printer this is emulating.  You can 
in fact have several PC printers connected to one PC in which all of them are 
AS/400 recognized.  For example, our shipping department has a dot matrix 
printer for carbon copies of shipping documents & a laser printer for bar 
coding.

These twinax emulation cards can also be plugged into the printer itself, but 
we are not doing any of that.  All our PC printers talk to the AS/400 via a 
PC or via a twinax device.

>  From:    Lerwick.Harding@alstom.co.nz

>  Hi,
>  
>  Our company is looking at buying a canon or sharp printer to lan attach to 
> our as400.
>  
>  I cannot seem to find any documentation on whether or not AS400 supports 
any
>  printers other than IBM printers.
>  
>  I know HP and other printers work - but how can I tell whether or not a
>  particular printer will work with our AS400 before I buy it?
>  
>  thanks for any ideas,
>  
>  Lerwick Harding
>  Alstom NZ

Alister William Macintyre 
Computer Data Janitor etc. of BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 on 400 model 170 OS4 V4R3 
(forerunner to IBM e-Server i-Series 400)  @ http://www.cen-elec.com Central 
Industries of Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and 
electrical sub-assemblies

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