PRINT SELECTION FOR APAR - II06056 92/07/14 APAR= II06056 SER= DD DOC INFO APAR TO DOCUMENT COMMON OS/2 PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS ( OS2INFOAPAR OS2PRINT OS/2 2.0 R200 562107701 562107901 PRINT ) STAT= INTRAN FESN5NFO000-000 CTID= II0000 ISEV= 4 SB92/05/29 RC CL PD SEV= 4 PE= TYPE= I RCOMP= INFOPCLIB PC LIB INFO ITE RREL= R001 FCOMP= PFREL= F TREL= T ACTION= SEC/INT= DUP/ USPTF= PDPTF= DUPS 0 DW92/05/29 RT SC FT RE PT UP LP PV AP EN FL LC92/06/06 RU92/05/29 CUST INST LVL/SU= FAILING MODULE= FAILING LVL/SU= SYSROUTE OF: RET APAR= PS= COMP OPER ENV= SYSRES= SYSIN= SYSOUT= CPU= RE-IPL= OPTYPE= SPECIAL ACTIVITY= REGRESSION= PRE-SCREEN NO.= RSCP= RS000 ERROR DESCRIPTION: **************************************** *PROBLEM* DOS application generated print job spools but does not print. (Green arrow still points to document in job object found in the print object). *SOLUTION* The DOS application has not closed the printer data stream. If the DOS application is printing using BIOS interrupt 17h then use the PRINT_TIMEOUT DOS Setting to force the data stream closed. You may be able to determine if the application is using int 17h (as opposed to int 21h) by the destination name. LPTx in Win-OS/2 uses int 17h while LPTx.OS2 uses int 21h function calls. Parallelx in DOS uses int 17h. LPTx in DOS can be either one, older versions of applications use int 17h. The PRINT_TIMEOUT setting, by default, is turned ON and set to 15 seconds. User should wait 15 seconds, if the job doesn't complete spooling, then the DOS application is not using int 17h (See discussion below on lptdd.sys). ------------------------------------------------------------- *PROBLEM* DOS application generated print job is split into several spool files. *SOLUTION* If the DOS application opens and closes the printer data stream for every character, line, or page then there is nothing short of disabling the spooler for that printer to correct this problem. An alternative may be to upgrade the application. Contact the manufacturer. If the problem occurs with complex printouts, then you may need to increase the DOS Settings PRINT_TIMEOUT value. -------------------------------------------------- *PROBLEM* The DOS application generated print job will not begin printing until the application is terminated. *SOLUTION* The DOS application has opened the data stream and sent the print output but has not closed the the data stream. If the application is printing using int 21h, then use the DOS_DEVICE DOS Setting to load the c: os2 mdos lptdd.sys device driver to convert the int 21h calls into int 17h calls. The PRINT_TIMEOUT DOS Setting can be used to close the print job. ------------------------------------------------------------- *PROBLEM* My security device attached to the parallel port doesn't work. Any of my DOS applications that use the security device can only be started from one DOS session. An error message is displayed when trying to start additional copies of this application. *SOLUTION* USER can press the key sequence Ctrl-Alt-PrtSc simultaneously to have the security software release access to the parallel port software prior to starting second copy of the DOS application. ------------------------------------------------------------- *PROBLEM* After printing from one DOS application and then trying to print from anywhere else within OS/2, nothing prints. When I terminate the DOS application, other printing works fine. *SOLUTION* The particular DOS application you are initially printing from, is accessing the parallel port hardware directly. OS/2 prevents collisions from two or more applications trying to access the same parallel port hardware simultaneously by preventing the second access until the first DOS application terminates. This is true even if the second application is the OS/2 print object! ------------------------------------------------------------- *PROBLEM* Other parallel attached devices (not printers) such as tablet systems, LAN adapters, and parallel to SCSI devices do not work in a DOS session. *SOLUTION* There's a current restriction within DOS sessions where hardware interrupt IRQ7 is not reflected into the DOS session. OS/2 development is aware of this limitation and is working on a solution. These hardware attachments may attempt to use this feature of the parallel port and are prevented from doing so. ------------------------------------------------------------- *PROBLEM* I have a PS/2 system that supports a DMA parallel port. Can OS/ take advantage of this? *SOLUTION* The current systems with a DMA parallel port include PS/2 models 56, 57, 80-A21, 80-A31, 90 and 95. Customer with these systems should ensure that the built-in parallel port arbitration level is set to SHARED7 (DMA is enabled). OS/2 will automatically take advantage of this feature; no additional setup is required. OS/2 1.3 customers with CSD 5054 or greater can reenable this feature. Use the reference diskette shipped with this system to view the system configuration (setup). ------------------------------------------------------------- *PROBLEM* My printer does not have a supported OS/2 PM printer driver. *SOLUTION* If your printer driver is not among the 200 printers supported then determine if your printer supports a more common printer emulation mode. Install the printer driver that supports your printer in the emulation mode. ------------------------------------------------------------- *PROBLEM* My printer has a supported Win-OS/2 printer driver but not a PM printer driver. How should I configure my system? *SOLUTION* If you will be doing primarily Win-OS/2 printing then setup the proper Windows printer driver within the control panel. Setup the OS/2 print object with the IBMNULL printer driver. You should be able to print from Win-OS/2 with no problems. Contact your printer manufacturer to obtain an OS/2 printer driver or to determine what other printers your printer emulates. ------------------------------------------------------------ *PROBLEM* Printing from Win-OS/2 is very slow, everywhere else is okay. *SOLUTION* If printing from Win-OS/2 and Print Manager is specified for the printer, then you may need to set the Print Manager Options menu to a higher priority than what it is currently set to. ------------------------------------------------------------ *PROBLEM* My system has an AT bus (ISA) and my parallel printer prints slowly from anywhere under OS/2, DOS, or Win-OS/2 sessions. *SOLUTION* Your parallel port address and hardware interrupt levels are not set correctly. Valid parallel port combinations include 3BC/IRQ7, 378/IRQ7, and 278/IRQ5. Power off your system, remove the parallel port adapter and configure the adapter by adjusting the DIP switches and/or jumpers to set the parallel port to one of these industry standard combinations. Make sure that other adapter cards are not interrupting on the same interrupt levels. Sound, MIDI and serial cards can share these same hardware interrupt levels. ------------------------------------------------------------ *PROBLEM* Printing works just fine under the DOS operating system but after installing OS/2, printing does not work. *SOLUTION* If the print output can be seen in the print object (if spooler is enabled), then the problem is most likely either the cable or the hardware interrupt level. See the solution above for directions to configure your parallel port. Some signals used to transmit data under OS/2 are not used when printing under DOS, some cable manufacturers reduced the costs of their cables by not wiring these signals. You may need to purchase a new cable. Some older parallel port adapter cards do not interrupt properly, since DOS did not use this feature you may not have seen this problem. You may need to upgrade your parallel port adapter. --------------------------------------------------------------- *Problem* . Customer has Printer Speedup boards and or utilities that can be used under DOS but not OS/2 such as printer engines and Postscript speedup devices. . *Solution or Limitation* . These Speedup boards are not supported under 2.0. The only possibility of using them is if they are not for a specific printer port that is also a generic printer port under OS/2 for example LPT3 and a physical LPT3 device exists, the customer may be able to either use the device driver in a VDM or in a VM Boot session. This is the only possible support. -------------------------------------------------------------- LOCAL FIX: