This is topic Problems with Samsung SRP-350 printers in forum Ground Level at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-06-2012, 06:34 PM:
 
We have two of the Samsung (Bixolon) SRP-350 printers. One of them just decided to stop printing suddenly. I spent two hours today on the phone with the RTS tech guy -- we uninstalled, reinstalled, unplugged, shut down, restarted, changed drivers, changed the USB port, and virtually everything else under the sun and nothing works. The printer will print its own self-test page, so I know it CAN print, but nothing from the computer. The print jobs show up in the print queue.

What's weird is, it was working yesterday just fine. It quit when I called in to have RTS change-over our credit card processing to a different vendor -- the printer wouldn't print when we did a test transaction.

Anyone else had trouble with these and is there a little known solution?

The computer is a fairly new Dell running Win7, and the printer is plugged in via one of those parallel-to-USB adaptor cables.
 

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Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 09-06-2012, 06:38 PM:
 
Have you tried it on a different computer?
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-06-2012, 07:44 PM:
 
Not yet, I ran out of time and had to get back over here (day job). I'm going over right now to try that.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-06-2012, 11:03 PM:
 
Well. I goofed around with things and got everything to working.

Along with refusing to print, the printer would cause RTS to crash -- the only way out was to exit and restart RTS.

I just unplugged and swapped things around and did some trial runs. Swapped the printers, problem stayed with the same computer -- so that ruled the printer out. Swapped the USB adapter cable, the problem moved to the other computer, so it looks like the cable is the culprit. But during RTS' "recovery" from the cable-caused crash, the receipt suddenly printed, so I rebooted and now it's working fine after about a dozen trials.

I'm sure it will perform perfectly until right before we start selling tickets tomorrow.
 

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Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 09-06-2012, 11:32 PM:
 

 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-07-2012, 12:43 AM:
 
That is a surprisingly-accurate representation of my mood this evening!
 

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Posted by Jeff Kane (Member # 6372) on 09-07-2012, 08:35 AM:
 
Cables are often overlooked but are as often as not the source of problems. Between wear and tear, cheap manufacturing, etc, they can be marginal but work for years until they just... don't. It's also common for them to work well enough to transfer device-IDs and allow the PC to recognize the device, but not sustain the data transfer necessary to print.

You can order cables from Monoprice.com for very very little, it's worth having a few on hand just to swap out.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-07-2012, 10:58 AM:
 
I swappped the cables too, but the problem stayed in the same spot.

The bottom line is, BOTH of these printers are working erratically. The boxoffice one had been the most reliable, until this most recent incident. When we put the new computer into the concession stand about 3 weeks ago, the printer refused to work in there at first. I spent about 2 hours on the phone with RTS trying various things, nothing worked, until they asked me to swap printers and then.....voila, they BOTH worked. We thought we were out of the woods, but now the problem keeps recurring in both printers, intermittently, with no apparent cause.

The boxoffice setup seems to be a little more reliable, but either one will stop working, for no reason. Sometimes they'll quit during a shift; other times they'll be working when we close, and then the next night one will not be working.

I truly don't know what I did to get it to work last night, but at this moment everything is working. I'm sure we'll be right in the middle of ticket sales tonight and one or the other will quit. Short of chucking the entire system and getting a whole new one, I don't know what to do.
 

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Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 09-07-2012, 11:17 AM:
 
If you're having intermittent problems with both printers, I would replace the cables on both with new cables and see what happens. When installing the cables, don't leave them in a bundle tie-wrapped behind the machine or wadded up into a ball -- unroll them completely and try to insure that you have no right-angle bends in them.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-07-2012, 12:18 PM:
 
The one printer is connected via a brand new cable which is a USB-to-parallel adapter. The other has a similar (older) adapter, connected to a standard parallel printer cable (not directly to the printer). The same problem has surfaced in both printers periodically and I've moved the cables/adapters back and forth. And, I have a spare printer cable that I've switched in a time or two, it doesn't cure the problem.

It all started when we got the new concession computer. At the same time, we downloaded and installed the newest version of RTS. I've asked RTS if there could be a connection there, but they say no.

I know SOMETHING has to be causing this but I am at a loss for a cause. This is a problem with technology -- sometimes it just....doesn't....work. That's what I like about steam engines. If it's not working you can usually see, hear or feel the problem.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-07-2012, 02:37 PM:
 
So....I just went over to give things a test, and after leaving it all in "working order" last night, today the concession printer does not work. The office printer, which was the one not working at the beginning of this thread, is still working.

That's after zero activity, nobody being in the building, no power outage, no reboots or restarts, NOTHING HAPPENED ALL NIGHT AND ALL MORNING and still this thing has stopped.

W. T. F.????
 

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Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 09-07-2012, 02:49 PM:
 
Is it possible to use USB - USB cable in your setup? I have seen problems with USB - Parallel printers before that I could never make any sense of.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-07-2012, 03:47 PM:
 
Well these printers don't have a USB port on them. Even the "new" version of the printer on the RTS site doesn't have a USB.

I'm going to order in a couple of these accessory ports, made by Samsung that plug into the back of the printers and basically replace the parallel port with a USB port. Then just use a regular USB cable to connect them to the computers. After that, it's the sledgehammer pictured above.
 

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Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 09-08-2012, 07:16 AM:
 
Changing to a serial - parallel converter is probably a good move. Let the interface do the physical layer protocol conversion. The computer will see USB and the printer will see parallel.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-17-2012, 12:25 AM:
 
Well the converters (above link) are installed, and the problem is still there. Both printers worked great on Friday. On Saturday, the concession machine worked for about 10 minutes and then quit. On Sunday, neither one will work.

I've had two computer experts on this problem and they are both stumped, plus I've spent at least 5 or 6 hours on the phone with RTS with no problem uncovered by them, either.

And, lost a 100-hour-old bulb on Friday night. First show it worked fine, second show it would not light. Replacement bulb worked fine. That's the first defective bulb I've ever had.

To say I've had a frustrating weekend is quite the understatement!
 

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Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 09-17-2012, 02:26 AM:
 
Many printers have a built-in "test page" that you can print to be sure that the printer itself is working. Do your printers have that, and does it print?

Can you print to your printers from software other than your cash register program? I don't know much about how printers are set up with MS Windows, but is there a test page that you can print from your computer to the printer? (With UNIX CUPS, you can just navigate to the listing for your printer on the localhost:631 webpage and click the "print test page" button -- perhaps there is something similar in Windows?)

Based on what you have posted so far, I don't think you have yet narrowed the problem down to an issue with the printers themselves (or the connection cables, etc), an issue with the MS Windows printer drivers and/or installation, or an issue with your cash register software.

The first thing I would try is printing a few lines to the printer using something like Notepad, and see what, if anything, happens.
 

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Posted by Kevin Fairchild (Member # 4985) on 09-17-2012, 09:43 AM:
 
What drivers are you using? With our SRP-350 we use the standard text-only driver from Microsoft.

Are you having problems with all print jobs? Credit card receipts, gift card receipts, tickets, etc.?

Does your computer have serial or parallel ports? It so, give those a try.

We have both parallel and usb interfaces and both seem to work fine for us.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-17-2012, 12:49 PM:
 
When the printer stops, it won't print from anything -- software, notepad or whatever -- but it WILL still print its own internal test page.

I put in the aforementioned upgrade cards (which convert the printers from parallel to USB type ports on the back) and installed brand-new USB cables. After another 90 minutes on the phone with RTS this morning, all seems to be working correctly NOW. We'll see what happens tonight when we actually use them to sell stuff.

The tech from RTS set up a "direct to USB" type of driver that fixed the problem. I remain skeptical this'll work in the long term but we'll see.

At least my concession crew is learning good practices in "how to deal with computer problems." So there's a silver lining of sorts.
 

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Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 09-17-2012, 02:13 PM:
 
What that tells you is that the printer itself hasn't locked up, therefore one potential source of the problem is now eliminated.

When you have problems with the printer, does it happen immediately when you start printing receipts, or after a few receipts have been printed?

One thing that might be interesting to try would be to set up a little program (batch file, whatever) that prints a single line of text to the printer. Run that between each receipt that you print. Find out if the printer locks up consistently when printing the receipt, printing the single line, or randomly with both of the printouts. This will help to isolate the problem to your cash register software or the printer driver.

Better yet, can you capture a dummy receipt and print that between each real receipt instead of a simple line of text? That might tell you if there's something funky about, for example, any graphics that are printed on your receipt. Note that the dummy receipt that you print between the real receipts shouldn't printed through the cash register software, since the objective is to find out if the cash register software is at fault.

Further thought: Does Windows have a printer status page? If so, what does it say about your printer when it's not working? For example, I can look at the status page for my printers and see messages like "printer online", "printer idle", "printer turned off", "printer on fire", and so on. (Yes, "printer on fire" is a real error message.)

Further thought #2: Are you using any graphics or fancy fonts on your receipts? If so, what happens if you stop doing that and just print the plainest of plain-jane receipts -- no boldface, no underline, no double-size, no graphics of any kind.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-17-2012, 05:53 PM:
 

quote: Frank Cox

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When you have problems with the printer, does it happen immediately when you start printing receipts, or after a few receipts have been printed?

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