Re: [SLUG] printing to canon printer

[<jasonb@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ditto,

I bought a Cannon BJC-5100 at a good price and assumed it was a 'normal'
printer.  Bad decision - while it does have intelligence built-in it seems
that it requires a raw raster-image for all print jobs. (at least - that
is what the output from windows looks like).

I am trying to reverse engineer the protocol used to print to the damn
thing with no luck at this stage.  (BTW - any hints on tools for this kind
of work ?).  While the driver on Windows can output to a file, cat'ing
this file to /dev/lp0 on Linux doesn't do a thing.

Ther is a commercial printing system that supposely supports these kinds
of printers, namely PrintPro (commercial version of CUPS at
http://www.cups.org).  Although after buying a copy it still don't work -
and their customer service leaves as much to be desired as Cannon's.

I have tried to contact Cannon and have yet to have an Email acknowledged,
let alone receive any useful information.

So my recommendation to people - DON'T BUY CANNON.  They are not friendly
to non-windows users.

(BTW - if anybody has any info on working win-printr drivers for linux
ect, please let me know.  Whether it is a Cannon or not.)

Jason.



On Mon, 10 Jul 2000, Dave Fitch wrote:

> 
> "Aussie" <aussie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > If you purchased the printer after Jan 1 2000, you are out of luck. Canon 
> > removed ALL inbuilt fonts for their printer range on 1/1/00 and, as a result, 
> > no Canon printer (with the exception of the A3 BJC-4650) will accept plain text 
> > input. Additionally, Canon does not support and drivers except Winblows 
> > drivers, so you use Linux at your own risk. I spoke to a tech there only last 
> > week, so the info is very recent. Plain text support will be removed from the 
> > BJC-4650 in the next 3 months, leaving Canon as an anti-Linux supplier.
> 
> I'm coming to the conclusion Canon are pretty useless in other
> areas as well.  My chick bought a scanner (the 630P - parallel
> port one).  It doesn't seem to be listed on the SANE list of
> supported scanners, so I emailed "driversupport@xxxxxxxxxxxx"
> which I got off their web site (as there's no mention of linux
> anywhere on it) asking for info on using it under linux.
> I've sent the email twice now over about 3 weeks with no response
> at all.  Next I'm printing out the email and starting to fax it
> to various numbers at Canon.  I don't take poor customer service
> very well I'm afraid.
> 
> Dave.
> 
> 
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---
Jason Ball
Electronic Commerce Specialist
Corporate Express Australia Ltd
Phone: +61 2 9335 0374  Fax: +61 2 9335 0753
Email: jason.ball@xxxxxxxxx