Printing

CAB print settings

• Q29: CAB error: "Cannot print to device #ID."
  
  A: The printer preset's have not been taken over correctly. Solution: Go to the CAB printer settings, select the desired print channel and save new settings in CAB.

Printing with Calamus SL

• Q39: Nothing happens when printing via VDI drivers or an error message is displayed saying: "Could not start the print monitor".
  
  A: Check the system parameters of Calamus SL for how much System memory is left free. You should allocate 2Mb or more for the System because because Calamus can create large quantities of data when printing.

Miscelleneous

• Q2: PRINTMON cannot find it's RSC.
  
  A: There are two possible solutions:
  
  
  1. Use the new version of PRINTMON with integrated RSC or
      
  2. Enter the path of the print monitor in the $HOME directory of the MAGX.INF (for example #_ENV HOME=C:\GEMSYS\usr\, C:\NVDITOOL.S\PRINTMON\ )
  
  
• Q7: Two pages are printed when printing to a PCL printer. The first page has an error message "@PJL ENTER LANGUAGE = PCL"
  
  A: This printer does not support Page Job Language. Solution:
  
  
  1. For printers up to 300dpi use an older HP LaserJet driver (Laserjet, Laserjet II, Laserjet III)
      
  2. For printers with up to 600dpi use the "GCC Elite 1212" printer driver.
      
• Q14: Printing in black only mode using the Epson Stylus Photo or the Epson Stylus Photo 700 using the 400/600/800 printer driver only works in draft mode, but not in "360dpi normal" - or "720/1440 best" mode (only "half of the graphic blocks" are printed). The full colour mode has no problems.
  
  A: The reason for this is the fact that these printer have only 32 black inkjets but the 400/600/800 models have 64. Solution:
  
  
  1. Use the "Epson Stylus Color" printer driver when printing black only or
     
     
  2. Download the NVDI 5.02 FreshUp with the latest printer drivers.
  
  
• Q15: Colour printing does not work with the Epson Stylus Colour 300 with any printer driver. But it works OK in the black only mode.
  
  A: This printer is totally incompatible with the ESC/P2 standart (does not accept any set colour commands). Solution:
  

  Don't buy this printer. Spend a little more and buy a better printer.

  NVDI does not and will not support this printer.
  
  
• Q25: Colour printing with the HP 500 C does not work.
  
  A: Update the PCL.INF file.
  
  
• Q36: Colour and grey scale prints lack contrast.
  
  A: You can control brightness and contrast with the appropriate printer dialog for colour and greyscale printing.
  
  Please note that for various printers there are not only choices for different papers but also for print quality (draft, normal, best). Printing speed vary depending on the quality selected and amount of passes per line (to allow sufficient time for the ink to dry).
  
  
• Q38: Trying to print the error message "Could not print because of a system error.".
  
  A: The following problem could be the cause of this message
  
  
  1. Could not open the printer driver because an "old" printer driver that is no longer present has been accessed (for example an old NVDI4 device driver), or the driver could not be loaded because of lack of memory. Or
     
     
  2. The print thread could not be opened because another AUTO folder program, Accessory or parallel running GEM program is hogging the AES/VDI trap (for example alternative an alternative file selector or Monitor Saver program) and is not re-entrant. Such programs are not suitable for multitasking! Solution: De-activate step by step all AUTO folder prgrams, Accessories and programs in the START folder until you find the offending item.
     
     Tip:Users of the alternative file selector Boxkite can get the latest Boxkite version from http://www.atari-computer.de/hbecker/.
     

Printer Control Panel

• Q40: When loading the printer control panel the error message "Unknown AES call #200"
  
  A: This error only appears when print dialog functions are missing which can happen under following conditions:
  
  [ MagiC 6]
  1. The shared Lib (PDLG.SLB) for print dialogs is not present.
  
  
  [MagiC 5.20 (or older), TOS]
  2. WDIALOG is missing or not loaded from the AUTO folder
     
     
  3. An old version of WDIALOG has been installed (for example by the boot selector for the AUTO folder).
     
     
  4. Under MagiC4 (5, 5.1, 5.2) WDIALOG.PRG is present in the AUTO folder but has not been entered in the AUTOEXEC.BAT which is also in AUTO folder...
     

Phoenix

• Q6: Phoenix does not print under MagiC-PC when using PRN instead of VDI printing.
  
  A: Phoenix prints single characters via STDPRN (i.e. without opening and closing the parallel interface). Solution:
  
  
  1. Use VDI printing (using the report functions of Phoenix)
     
     
  2. Disable the NPC_PRN.DEV; drawback: printing from other programs slows.
     
     
  3. Use a better database :-)
     

Photoline

• Q3: Photoline prints incorrect sizes.
  
  A: This is a bug in Photoline. Photoline has problems if the Printer ID entries have a gap (for example ID21, 23, 24 are used, but ID22 - ESCP2 is not used). Instead of using driver 23, Photoline assumes settings of driver 21, which results in incorrect print sizes. There two ways to work-a-round this problem until this bug is fixed in Photoline:
  
  
  1. Enter active printer drivers consecutively (from ID 21) in the ASSIGN.SYS file
     
     
  2. Use INSTPRNT.APP to install a printer in the "gap" (in the above example a ESCP2.SYS for ID 22) even if it is not going to be used.
     

Printing with MagiCMac

• Q9: Printing directly with the Epson Stylus 600/800 printer under MagiCMac does not work, but using the mac driver it works OK.
  
  A: Use MagiCMac 2.2.4 or later and activate the "Synchronous" printing mode.
  
  
• Q13: Direct printing using the Epson Stylus 600/800 does not work with MagiCMac 2.2.4.
  
  A: An error in MagiCMac ( Cprnos() only works correctly with tranmissions with CTS) that can occur on fast computers where more print data is delivered than the printer can accept. This error has been corrected in MagiCMac 6.01...
  
  
• Q10: When printing via the Quickdraw driver under MagiCMac (more than say 60 pages) the Mac driver reports that the drive is full. This did not happen with NVDI4.
  
  A: When "Background printing" has been enabled in the print dialog, the complete documentwill be bitmapped and sent to the Quickdraw driver. Solution:
  
  
  1. make more space on the hard disk
     
     
  2. deselect "background printing"; to print each page individually to the Quickdraw driver like under NVDI4. Disadvantage: longer print times, documents (for example fax) are not processed together.
     
     
  3. use NVDI specifific printer driver (best solution, if the printer is supported)
  
  
• Q28: Fontname crashes when changeing from the the Mac print dialog to the NVDI print dialog.
  
  A: This is a bug in the WDIALOG.SLB, which does only occur if the NVDI print dialog is used in a window (like in Fontname). You find an updated version of PDLG.SLB and WDIALOG on the Software Update page.
  
  
• Q37: My computer hangs when printing via the macintosh printer driver.
  
  A: Two possible situations could be the cause:
  
  
  1. "Give time to Mac applications in the background" has not been selected in MagiCMac. This could lead to a situation where the mac printer driver (application) is waiting for an event which cannot happen because no processing time has been allocated.
     
     
  2. The system utility Speeddoubler has been installed. Realiable working of MagiCMac and Speeddoubler is no possible. Deactivate Speeddoubler.

Signum

• Q34: Colour and greyscale printing does not work with Signum.
  
  A: This is a known limitation of Signum. Signum only supports printing of 2 or 8 colours.

Smurf

• Q33: Smurf prints an empty page before printing the image.
  
  A: Smurf sends the commands v_updwk() and v_clear_disp_list() before printing, which generate an empty page. Please contact the author for an updated version of Smurf.

Printing with TeleOffice

• Q32: When printing from TeleOffice under a multitaking O/S with "background printing" enabled, a blank page is printed.
  
  A: A well known bug in TeleOffice which sends a command that before it updates the page erases the display list. This does not get noticed, generally, when foreground printing, because there is enough space to build up the whole page. But if the is not enough space to build up the whole page or if background printing is active, erasing the display list (by TeleOffice) causes the printer to print an empty page.

Twist

• Q18: Twist does not print on my Epson or Conon printer. NVDI 4 worked OK.
  
  A: Twist has a number of bugs in the VDI/GDOS output that can be bypassed as follows:
  
  
  1. Twist only prints using printer ID 21; but the Epson printer has been entered under ID22 (the Canon driver under ID23). Solution:
     Use the ASSIGN.PRG or an ASCII editor to enter the desired printer to ID21. See also the NVDI manual page 24, section : "First printer driver in ASSIGN.SYS".
     
     
  2. Nothing happens when the GDOS print has been started. When the display window has been closed printing starts. Cause: Twist sends the output command to VDI only when the window has been closed...

Xact/XactDraw

• Q35: Colour and greyscale printing does not work with Xact and XactDraw.
  
  A: This is a known limitation of Xact/XactDraw. Both programs only support 2 or 8 colour printing.