Conference hydra::amiga_v1

2330.0. "boot time" by GILBRT::BEAUREGARD (read manual as a last resort) Tue Mar 07 1989 13:43

    Well, I had this strange problem with my Amiga the other day and
    I am not sure why the fix worked. I'm hoping someone in this notesfile
    will have an answer.
    
    Problem.
    	I have a NEC P2200 printer connected to the parallel port and
    it would not print graphic output from text editors (ProWrite,
    Excellence!). It did work about six months ago but since then I
    upgraded to WB1.3, and installed Cltd SCSIdos 3.0 (oh no!). The
    wordprocessors would print file if I selected draft or NLQ as the
    mode of printing. If, however I selected "normal", I would get
    linefeeds, but no text/image. I should also mention that Sonix would
    also print out graphics (6 mo. ago) but now exhibited the same problem.
    
    I figured that the printer driver somehow became corrupt so I got
    out 1)AmigaDos1.3, 2)Prowrite(w/1.3 printer driver and devices),
    and 3) Excellence! (w/1.3 printer driver and devices). I first copied
    the printer driver and printer device (Pinwriter) from the Prowrite
    originals over to my hard disk devs drawer and ran preferences.
    No luck so I repeated this process with both the AmigaDos1.3 and
    Excellence! driver and printer devices. Again, no luck. I then
    re-booted the system using the original prowrite disk and voila!
    graphic output. I repeated this with the Excellence! disk and again,
    everything looked good. So now I'm wondering why the same printer
    driver and printer device on my hard disk won't work. I'm aware
    of the fact that at boot time, the system looks at the
    system-configuration file on my boot disk in df0: but I thought
    that I could change the printer setup any time using preferences
    and as long as I chose use, the new printer info would be used.
    
    The fix was to copy the system-configuration file from dh0 to df0(boot
    disk) after running preferences with dh0: as the system disk. I
    understand why the printer may not initially work if the driver or device
    on the boot disk is corrupt, but if I run preferences and select
    "use" before trying to print out shouldn't everything work fine?
    Is there something happening at boot time that cannot be repeated
    during run time?
    
    Bye the way, AmigaDos1.3, Prowrite, and Excellence! all claim to
    have the latest 1.3 printer driver. Well I seem to have different
    drivers since the size of the printer.device files on these disks
    don't match.
    
    
    Roger
    
    
    

       If I'm not mistaken, I think that the solution is to initialize
       the printer by clicking on the "InitPrinter" (sp) icon or typing
       it at the CL.  The reason I qualify this with "If I'm not
       mistaken" is that I ALWAYS do the InitPrinter trick after changing
       printer characteristics from within Preferences or when physically
       changing printers (and it not being equal to the printer
       information contained in the system-configuration file on df0:
       upon startup) and my printers always work.  Given that I always
       go through this process, I can't say for sure that they wouldn't
       work if I didn't!?
       
       I used to have the problem you described - that being that it
       appeared as if the printer driver was being corrupted - when using
       WB 1.2.  Again, the InitPrinter command with 1.3 seems to have
       solved that problem for me.
       
       Art
       

    
    By the way, both ProWrite and Excellence! were shipped with pre-release
    versions of the 1.3 drivers and printer.device, which is why the
    file size would be slightly different from the OFFICAL 1.3 versions.
    
    Ed.