From: john@physiol.su.OZ.AU (John Mackin)
Subject: CAP / Dayna Etherprint / Compaq Pagemarq 15
Reply-To: John Mackin <john@civil.su.oz.au>
Organization: Department of Physiology, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 10:12:59 GMT

If anyone can help with this, I'd really appreciate it.

I have cap 6.0 PL 126 running well on a DECstation 5000, Ultrix 4.2
(with DEC-patched net_common.o and pfilt.o).  It's been up and working
for months.  I have an Ethernet whose router to the rest of the campus
doesn't pass EtherTalk packets, whether Phase I or Phase II, so it's
like my own little world as far as Appletalk goes.  I have _no_
LocalTalk cabling and _no_ Macintoshes.  My cap is configured to use
UAB and Native EtherTalk Phase I (and has DDP checksums disabled).  (I
am using UAB because I have no other Appletalk router.)

I have a Personal LaserWriter II NTR which is connected to a Dayna
EtherPrint box (which is on the same Ethernet as all the rest).
This setup works great, allowing all the PC and Unix users in the
building to print easily.

My problem is that I have just gotten a new printer.  It's a Compaq
Pagemarq 15 with a LocalTalk option.  I have tried to set it up in the
same way as the LaserWriter and it just doesn't work.  That is, I have
hooked it up to another EtherPrint ... and there I begin to lose.  The
EtherPrint manual insists that it has to be turned on before the
printer is.  I do that and it does its usual stuff.  Then I turn on the
printer.  What is supposed to happen (and does with the II NTR) is:

- The Activity light on the EtherPrint, which is on solid, is
  supposed to go dark and then flash with net activity "within
  30 seconds after the printer prints the start page".  (With the
  II NTR, it does this well _before_ the start print comes out.)

- The printer is supposed to come up and print its start page.

What happens with the Compaq is:

- The Activity light remains on solid for ever.

- The printer does not ever print its start page, and the display remains
  stuck at "Initializing...".  (The printer prints the start page fine
  in about 70 sec if I turn it on either with nothing plugged into its
  LocalTalk port or with the EtherPrint connected but powered off.)

I've tried quite a few things.  The EtherPrint comes with an
(apparently special) cable for connecting to the printer, and with
Apple printers no LocalTalk connector boxes are needed.  The EtherPrint
manual says that some non-Apple printers will not work unless connector
boxes are used, so I have tried that: same result.  I have tried using
the 9-pin D connector on the printer instead of the DIN: same.  I have
used tcpdump to watch the Ethernet traffic and it all looks great, as
do UAB's logs when I turn those on.  It just seems like the printer and
the EtherPrint don't like each other.  I haven't been able to try
hooking the printer up to a Mac (since there are none in the
building).  I've tried powering up the printer first and the EtherPrint
second, without expecting it to work.  It didn't -- the printer comes
up but I cannot talk to it at all with cap.  I never see the NBP
lookups from the EtherPrint in this case (see below).  This is what I
would expect given what the EtherPrint manual says.

I had problems like this with the II NTR when I first set it up, but
I fixed those.  They were due to Appletalk routing problems.  When
I got my internetwork router to stop EtherTalk and started using UAB,
those problems went away.  I think these, although they look the same
on the surface, have a different root cause.

When I start either EtherPrint, I see it do a number of AARP Probes,
and then an RTMP Request.  The AARP Probes are not answered, and
neither is the RTMP Request (uab tries to answer it but can't reply
to the net number of 0).  When I start the II NTR behind its EtherPrint,
I see the EtherPrint change net number to the net number I am using
and do NBP Lookups.  With the Compaq, none of this latter ever happens.

If anyone can offer any suggestions, I'd really appreciate it.  Thanks
in advance, and _please reply by mail_.

-- 
John Mackin <john@civil.su.oz.au>
Knox's box is a 286.                 Fox in Socks does hacks and tricks
Knox's box is hard to fix.           To fix poor Knox's box for kicks.
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.appletalk