Drawer Selection Considerations
There are several different things to verify when the printer does not print from the desired drawer. The failure could occur because of the attributes of the spooled file, how the printer is configured on the operating system, the settings on the printer, or a hardware problem.
For the purposes of this document, the terms drawer and tray will be used interchangeably. In general, however, the term drawer refers to the source drawer specified in the operating system spooled file, and the term tray refers to the paper tray installed in the printer hardware. When trying to determine why a spooled file did not print from the desired drawer, there are several things to gather to help determine what could be wrong. The information to gather includes a printer configuration page, the attributes of the spooled file, the printer device description or remote output queue description, and the writer joblog. The joblog may have messages about a specific error that is causing it to fail.
The Printer
For the printer, there are several things that can affect which drawer the printer selects. First, check the printer to determine if there are any messages on the printer panel or flashing lights indicating a problem at the printer. Make sure that the drawer requested has paper in it. Then, print out a configuration page for the printer to check the following:
Spooled File Attributes
The following parameters in the spooled file attributes can affect drawer selection:
o Is the printer reporting that the drawer is installed? If the printer does not report that the drawer is installed, this prevents the printer from selecting that drawer. This is a hardware problem with the printer.
o Is the printer reporting the correct paper size (legal, letter, and so on) in the drawer? If the printer reports the wrong paper size in the drawer, it could cause the printer to select a different drawer. Try reseating the paper in the drawer, or check for a hardware problem.
o Is the printer reporting a paper type of PLAIN in the drawer? Many printer models have the ability to set a paper type, such as PLAIN, LETTERHEAD, PREPRINTED and so on. Host Print Transform (HPT) does not specify a paper type, unless a modified Workstation Customizing Object (WSCST) has been created to request a particular paper type, so by default HPT will only print to a drawer that is setup for PLAIN paper. If the preferred paper tray has been assigned a specific paper type, then the printer will most likely choose a different drawer or issue a message to load PLAIN paper in the desired paper tray.
o Is tray re-numbering turned on? If the printer has tray re-numbering turned on, what is the drawer number set to? This could affect what drawer number is used in the Source Drawer parameter of the spooled file attributes.
o Is tray linking or tray switching turned on? Tray linking, or tray switching, is the function that allows paper to be automatically pulled from another drawer when the current drawer runs out of paper. For some printers, when tray linking is turned on, the printer is not able to select a specific drawer to print from because it sees all the drawers as one drawer. In this case, disabling the tray linking allows printing from specific drawers.
o The Page size (PAGESIZE) parameter, which includes the Page length,Page width, and Measurement method.
o The Lines per Inch (LPI) parameter.
o The Characters per Inch (CPI) parameter.
o The Source drawer (DRAWER) parameter.
o The Font identifier (FONT) parameter.
o The Form feed (FORMFEED) parameter.
o The Degree of page rotation (PAGRTT) parameter.
To display the spooled file attributes, use the Work with Spooled Files( WRKSPLF ) or Work with Output Queue (WRKOUTQ ) command, and then select Option 8 (Attributes). The Work with Spooled File Attr ( WRKSPLFA )
command can also be used, but that command requires knowing the settings for the Spooled file (FILE), Job name (JOB), and Spooled file number (SPLNBR) parameters.
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AS400 Printing Tips
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