On Dec 30, 2024, Kleene, Steven (kleenesj) wrote:
On December 7, 2024 4:21 PM, I wrote:
If you are able, please recommend a black-and-white Postscript laser printer that will work well with Debian (Bookworm). ...
With advice from the group, I bought a Brother DCP-L2640DW driverless monochrome printer/scanner. I run the fvwm window manager and can
print with lp and scan with xsane. I never installed the Brother
printer, scanner, or BR-Script3 drivers..
I've done that before, through the IIRC lprng package. Needed to edit /etc/printcap as I recall...
So I'm mostly happy, but I can't say I really understand who's doing what. Here are three questions.
1. Formerly (but still Bookworm), I had an HP LaserJet 5MP connected
with a USB-to-parallel adapter. I saw this character special device:A
crw-rw---- 1 root lp 180, 1 Dec 3 08:53 /dev/usb/lp1
I would typically print with something like "cat file > /dev/usb/lp1".
Now, though, with the new laser and a straight USB connection (no
wireless), I see these in /dev/usb:
crw------- 1 root root 180, 0 Dec 3 08:53 /dev/usb/hiddev0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9796 Dec 21 13:01 /dev/usb/lp1
Er, /dev/usb/lp1 in this instance isn't a character device.
2. I have a virtualbox Windows XP machine. With the HP printer, it
worked through CUPS and needed to find /dev/lp0. So I just made a
symbolic link from that to /dev/usb/lp1. XP had a driver for the old
HP. Now, though, the devices and the printer have changed. In XP, I
can choose from a long list of prehistoric printer drivers. Does that
even matter with a driverless printer? I also suspect the new device
stub won't work from XP. I don't really need to print from XP, but it
was sometimes convenient.
Chances are XP won't be able to print to it directly -- you'll likely
need to work around the outdated VM's lack of capabilities and "Print to
PDF" or otherwise send the document to the host machine for printing.
3. With xscan, the scan quality is good enough for most purposes. But
when I tested some fine engraving (like a dollar bill), it was less
sharp than I get with my old Epson Perfection 2400 (from 2004). In
both cases I asked for 300 dpi and set JPG quality as high as
possible. The Brother at 600 dpi didn't match the Epson at 300 dpi.
Would installing the Brother scanner driver be an improvement, or is
this just a limitation of the hardware?
Good job, posting to the world that you're trying to create counterfeit
bills. ;)
It is intentional that scanners don't do well on currency (though IME,
they tend to just go "no" instead of creating low-res output). It is
quite possible that Epson's control of it was in their (Windows?) driver software, rather than in the hardware/firmware; whereas 20 years later, Brother's put it in the printer internals.
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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Us