Help! I can't print!

 

 

 

Receipt printer:

The LECOLO has been designed to print a receipt and pop the drawer, no matter what.

SETUP:

Start > Control Panel > Printers and Faxes.
Add a Printer > Local Printer attached to this computer.
Click > Use the following Port LPT1.
Manufacturer > Generic. Printers > Generic/Text Only
Keep Existing Driver or Replace Existing Driver > Either one will work.
Printer name > Defaults to Generic/Text only - Change to rec (all lower case)
Check Yes for Do you want ot use this printer as the default printer?
Check "Do not share this printer".
Check Yes or No for "Do you want to print a test page?" Yes will print a test page.

IF THE PRINTER DOESN'T WORK:

First, try to print a Windows test page.

For receipt printers, go to Start > Control Panel > Printers and make sure you have a printer defined as rec (not Rec or REC). Right click the icon, and go to properties. Click on Print Test. Did it print?

If the receipt printer does not print from Windows, then the problem is either a:

1. Faulty or jammed printer
2. Faulty connection from the PC to the printer
3. Windows operating system problem
4. Workstation hardware problem

Make sure the paper and/or ribbon is not jammed (thermal printers don't have ribbons).
Check your cable connections from the computer to the printer. Wiggle or remove the cables.
Check to see if Windows will print to other printers.
Connect a receipt printer that you know is working to the workstation, and try to do a test page.

If nothing works, you should call a local computer company to come out to determine the problem.

If the receipt printer prints from Windows, but not the LECOLO, check your Register settings.
Go to Setup > Point of sale > Registers. Choose the correct register, and go to the second page.
The device id should be rec (not Rec or REC).

If you can print a Windows test, but it still won't print from the POS, click here for Support.

Report printer:

Report printers are "spooled" on the LECOLO. Spooled printers create a file on the LECOLO server, which is sent to the "LPD" client which runs on the back office PC. Any interruption in this flow will cause report or label printing to stop. When everything works, it works quite well. When it doesn't, there are some things you need to check before calling support.

SETUP:

Please note: In order to work properly, the printer must support the PCL5 or PCL6 print language. This will be listed in the specs for the printer. Do not purchase a printer that does not have them.

Install the drivers according to the instructions that come with the printer, and make sure you can do a print test.

If the printer does not work, you will have to get this rectified first. We may be able to assist with this, but with the huge number of printers that are on the market, we cannot be knowledgeable about them all.

If the printer does work, you must rename it report (not Report or REPORT).

Start > Control Panel > Printers and Faxes.
Right click the report printer, choose Rename, and enter report (not Report or REPORT).

 

WHEN REPORT OR LABEL PRINTING STOPS:

The first thing you must determine is which side stopped the printing. The LELECOLO or your store?

On your Counterpoint Menu, cursor down to Restart Printers & Hit Enter. You will see a screen that looks like this:

*****************************************************
Hello LE298
Listed below are any print jobs on the LELECOLO server that didn't print.
******************************************************
Please note that if nothing is listed, or you see the message
"Unable to connect to printer...", the problem is on your side.
Right click the LPD icon in the lower right hand corner on the
back office machine, stop LPD, and re-start it (In AlphaCom,
click on Utilities > LPD).
As an alternative, simply re-boot the back office computer.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
printer le298rep now printing le298rep-207125. enabled since Jan 01 00
Unable to connect to printer; will retry in 30 seconds...: Connection ti
med out
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Type which printer you want to fix? Report, Label, Both or Exit:
*****************************************************:

If there are print jobs listed, all you do is type in Report, Label, or Both, and the system will delete all print jobs, and restart the printers. Type Exit to exit the screen and return to Counterpoint.
In the example above, you are being told that the LELECOLO is unable to connect to your printer. The most common cause of this is the failure of the LPD client. The script above describes how to restart the client, or simply re-boot the back-office computer.

Do a Windows Print test.

Windows XP: Click on Start > Settings > Printers. Right click on the report printer, and go to Properties. Click on the tab that says Print Test Page.

Win 98: Click on Start > Control Panel > Printers. Right click on the report printer, and go to Properties. Click on the tab that says Print Test Page

If nothing prints, then you either have a printer or PC problem.
Check that it's plugged in to the wall, in back of the printer, and in back of the computer.
Is it jammed?
Is it out of toner or ink?
All printers have a method of doing a print test. Hold down the On-line Button.
Are there lights, especially RED ones on?
Switch the printer cable for a known good one. We've seen two bad cables in a week, lately.

When in doubt, REBOOT.

Sometimes the best and quickest thing to do is to shut down the back office computer and turn it off for 30 seconds. Rebooting solves a host of computer problems. It's like getting up after a good night's sleep. It's refreshed, and all the necessary programs, like the LPD client, are started from scratch again.

Restart the LPD Client.

If a test page prints does print, but you can't print from the LECOLO, then the culprit could be the LPD client on the back office computer. See Restarting LPD Client

If all this doesn't help, Call for Support.

 

Label printer:

Cognitive Blaster Label printer:

The Cognitive Blaster is a very reliable printer, but they are finicky. The most common problem is mistakenly printing a report to the label printer in the POS system. This literally fries its brain, and it won't print until it's been shut off for awhile and the print job is flushed from Windows.

SETUP:

Start > Control Panel > Printers and Faxes.
Add a Printer > Local Printer attached to this computer.
Click > Use the following Port LPT1.
Manufacturer > Generic. Printers > Generic/Text Only
Keep Existing Driver or Replace Existing Driver > Either one will work.
Printer name > Defaults to Generic/Text only - Change to blaster (all lower case)
Check Yes for Do you want ot use this printer as the default printer?
Check "Do not share this printer".
Check No for "Do you want to print a test page?" Blasters do not do print tests.

When the Blaster doesn't print:

The first thing you should do is turn it off. Please note that the power supply will maintain power to the printer for quite awhile, so a quick on and off won't drain the memory. You need to turn the printer off & leave it off for 30 seconds. When it comes back on the memory should be clear & it should start printing.

If it doesn't,

Is the red Error light on? There might be a label jammed or stuck.

We've given you the ability to print using Local print. Try printing a label using the printer labeled Labels - Local in the POS software. If it prints locally, then you need to reset the LPD Client. See Restarting LPD Client

Important NOTE! If the label printer prints from the back office PC as "local", but does not print from the spooler, and you have tried everything outlined here, follow the instructions for Report Printing. In the meantime, use the local printer. That way you can still get labels, you just can't do it from the POS stations.

You might have a job stuck in Windows.

Go to Start > Settings > Printers & click on the label printer (should be named blaster or label). If there's a job in the spooler, turn the printer on & click on Printer > Cancel All Documents. Once the document is cleared from Windows, turn the printer off again.

Do a printer test. Turn it off for 15 seconds, push the on-line button, and turn it back on while holding the on-line button down. If it prints, you know the printer is working. If it doesn't, call Cognitive.

If the printer test works, you need to do a Windows Print test.

Doing a Windows Print Test for a Cognitive Blaster label printer:

1. Go to a DOS prompt. This can be done by clicking START, then click RUN, and type the word CMD (Win98 is COMMAND), and hit Enter. This takes you to the DOS prompt.

2. Type CD\ and hit Enter [The Dos prompt will now be C:\> ].

3. Type the word EDIT and hit Enter (this takes you to the DOS editor).

4. Type the following exactly as it appears. Make sure that you use all CAPS and the number Zero:

! 0 100 100 2
TEXT 2 10 30 your name
END

5. Next, send the file to the printer by going to File -> Print. (You may use your mouse OR you can hold down the Alt key and press F; then P for Print.) Select OK to print the complete document.

If the print test does not work, then your PC is not communicating to the Blaster, and a PC problem.

Check that it's plugged in to the wall, in back of the printer, and in back of the computer.
Is it jammed?
Are there lights, especially RED ones on?
Switch the printer cable for a know good one. We've seen two bad cables in a week, lately.

Restarting the LPD

Look for the LPD icon in the lower right hand corner of the desktop. It looks like a printer:

If you do not see this icon, then the LPD is not running. Without it, Windows won't know where to send the print jobs. It's set to load automatically upon boot-up, so one method of restoring it is to reboot the back office workstation.

 

Rebooting your back office PC will automatically reset the LPD client, but you can also restart the LPD by logging in to Counterpoint. Once Counterpoint is started, at the top of the screen, you'll see Utilities.


Click on Utilities, and scroll down to LPD. Click on LPD, and that will start the program.

Sometimes the LPD will simply get confused. In this case, you'll be able to print from Windows, but not the LECOLO, and you DO see the icon. Right click the icon, and Close it. Then follow the instructions for Restarting LPD.

If this doesn't get things printing, call support. We may have to jump start the printers on our side.

Trash Can Printer

Your system should have come with a way to dump unwanted reports. We call this printer the Trash Can. If yours doesn't have one, it's pretty simple to make one.

Go into the POS software, and go to Setup > System > Printer Groups.
Hit F1 & you'll see the Public Printers.
Choose an open line, like 8 or something, choose N for Normal printer.
Type in Trash Can at Description
Terminal ID = TRASH.TXT
Choose 1 for printer type
Choose Y for Compress
Hit enter to finish the screen & you're done!

Stopping a Big Print Job

Sometimes you'll create a huge print job, as in hitting F1 all the way down the page for labels, and you realize that you're about to print two thousand labels. Help! How do I stop it?

One thing you need to know is that once it's started to print, there is nothing we can do at the LECOLO to stop it. The job has been sent, and the LPD client running on the back office PC has done it's job and sent it to the printer. This means that it is in the Windows spooler, and the only way to stop it is from your Windows.

First, turn off the printer. Do this several times. The printer has a memory, or buffer, and turning it off will clear that buffer. If that doesn't help much, then the job may be a big one and you're going to have to stop it.

Click Start > Settings > Printers.
Click on the printer that's printing & a box will come up.

If there's no print job, make sure you clicked the proper printer. Otherwise, the job has been sent to the printer, and turning off the printer should stop the job.

If there is a a print job, with the printer still printing, Click Printer & scroll down to Cancel all documents. It's important that the printer be on and printing when you do this. Windows does not like cancelling a job for a printer that's turned off.

Setting up a Home or "Remote" Printer

Since the beginning of the LECOLO, there have been several different methods of setting up home printers. We have finally settled on the following setup since it seems to work with just about any type of printer, it doesn't open holes in your firewall, and because it is "local" printing, it works very well and uses little or no system resources.

The only requirements are that the printer must support PCL5 or PCL6. When considering the purchase of a printer, check the specs for PCL5 or PCL6. In general, Windows-only printers, especially multi-function inkjet printers will NOT work. Most HP or Brother printers support PCL5 or PCL6.

We are assuming that Alphacom is installed on your laptop or home PC. If not, install it according to your initial setup instructions, and use the back office user name and password (lexxx3).

We are also assuming that your printer is working in Windows. If this is a new printer, follow the installation instructions that came with it, and make sure you can do a print test. If you have trouble with this, contact the people you bought the printer from for assistance.

Once everything is working from Windows, all you do is rename the printer: report (all lower case; Report, or REPORT is NOT the same as report).

In Alphacom, click on File > Print Setup, and when the box comes up, make sure the printer name that Alpha is going to use is report. If not, click the down arrow in the Name field, and choose the printer called report. Click OK.

Now, your printer is setup and Alphacom knows to send any print jobs that come in to the printer called report.

Next, check your Counterpoint setup. Open Counterpoint and go to: Setup > System > Printer groups & Hit F1.
This is the list of printers for your store. Look at the Device ID field. You should have a printer with the device ID called unform. If you do, that is the printer you should use to print at home. If you don't have one, you'll have to make one.

Creating the printer in Counterpoint:

Go to: Setup > System > Printer groups & Hit F1.

A Box will come up listing all the printer for your store. Add the following:

15. N Reports - Home unform 60 3 LaserJet 6 LPI Y
16. N PO's - Home unform 60 3 LaserJet 6 LPI N

 

Make no changes to the above, and be certain that the word "unform" is in lower case. Unform or UNFORM will not work.

Time to test the printer. The easiest test is to go to: Setup > Reports. Choose Customers > Categories.

Please enter:

1. Starting category "First"
2. Ending category "Last"
3. Print history ? N

When your choice of printers comes up, choose Reports - Home

Select printer:
Display on screen
Print to disk
Reports
Purchase Orders
Labels
Labels - Local
Reports - Home
PO's - Home

 

A very short report should print. If it does, you're done. This setup will work anywhere.

If not, please re-check your setup in Counterpoint. The key is that unform must be all lower case. The name doesn't matter. The choice of LaserJet 6 LPI does. The Y means compressed print for reports, and the N means full size print for things like PO's. etc. If it still doesn't print, ensure that you have named your printer "report" (also all lower case and no quotes). If it still won't print, check your firewall, and make sure it is permitting "incoming traffic for LPD". If all else fails, call for support.

 

 

 

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