Wrong characters from application STUREC

[blackcat4866]

OK. The machine is a bizhub PRO950.

Only then printing certain documents from a DOS based application "STUREC" (student records), the horizontal lines appear as rows of character ASCII 137: e

According to the application's website, this application has been around since the early 1980's. Certain printers require changing the symbol set to: PC-8 aka Epson Graphics Character Set.

20053

Has anyone done this setting? =^..^=

Oops! I forgot to mention that we're using the PS-504 PostScript option with the appropriate PS print driver. If I understand correctly this application bypasses the print driver sending the print data directly to the IP address. =^..^=

[TheOwl]

You would be right in saying that this application bypasses the print driver as 99% of DOS based applications print using PJL Escape Sequences.

I looked for the setting you need to change on a C364, so I don't know if the 950 is different...

Utility > User Settings > Printer Settings > PCL Settings > Symbol Set

The C364 I looked at uses PC-8 as standard as I think most Konica Minolta's do. There could be a chance that the ASCII character is being interpreted in correctly because of a bug within the firmware, so I would also try updating the firmware.

The other thing to do is to get the PCL Escape Sequences of the device and see if they match what the print job is sending through.

Finally, the other thing to look at is doing doing a print data capture which basically stores the print job on the device as well as printing it. It should from memory, store the job in a .PS format which can be sent directly to another machine to see if the issue happens on other devices as well. To do this, you will need to enable the data capture, send through the print job to the machine and then retrieve the captured file via FTP.

FTP into the device using the following credentials (unless they are different on the 950):

Username: capture
Password: sysadm

Then use the following commands to retrieve the file:

bin (puts the transfer mode into binary)
ls or dir (which will list all the files available)
get filename.xxx c:\ (replace filename with the name of the file and xxx with the file extension)
bye (quits the FTP seesion)

You should then have a copy of the captured file on the root of your C: drive. The other thing you can do is to send this captured file off the Konica Minolta for them to analys and suggest possible fixes.

Hopefully this helps.

[blackcat4866]

Thanks Owl. That points me in the right direction.

I hope it does not come down to the data capture, since I haven't had much luck doing data captures on Konica Minolta products. Oh, I can get the bizhub C360 to capture, but the damn machine wouldn't give it up. I tied up the hotline for 2+ hours trying to FTP into the machine. The guy coaching me was quite knowledgeable, but alas, we never got the captures. In the end, I used the built in data capture utility in the Copystar CS-C4035E across the hall, on the same network.

Is it safe to assume that STUREC is sending PCL5 print data? Thanks for the new ammunition. =^..^=

[TheOwl]

90% of the time, not being able to access the copier via FTP is caused by the FTP Server not being enabled from the network settings. With out that being enabled, you can't FTP into the device.

The other 9% is normally firewall issues because simply enabling port 21 for outbound traffic isn't enough as the machine connects via a Passive FTP connection to which there should be another firewall rule for.

Lastly, the Data Capture feature must be enabled on the device via Tech Rep Mode before there will be anything worth copying via FTP.

[blackcat4866]

Utility > User Settings > Printer Settings > PCL Settings > Symbol Set

I looked at a bizhub 423 today. The default is Roman-8. I have the choice of Turk PC-8, Nord/Swed PC-8, or one other, none English. I'll have to do some experimentation to see which one works. =^..^=

[blackcat4866]

Just resolved this one. It looks quite a bit different on the PRO950. I could not find access from the Utility menu, but found it easily from the web interface.

From the web interface: Administrator > "password" > OK > Print Setting > "Default Setting/PCL" Edit > "Symbol Set: Roman-8" > drop down menu to PC-8 Code PG437 > OK > OK > Log Out > OK.
=^..^=