Printer will not work with SuSE 8.1, help

Hello Everyone,
I posted this subject on 'Product / Book review' forum, but was told it should be in a genral forum. I have a hpdeskjet 656c and the OS [SuSE] says it will work, but it's not. Sweet_Angel gave me a web site for hp printers. I went there and got a download to update, but when I loaded it the suse said it had the data already. I've done a auto laod for the printer and manual. Suse even IDs the printer as hpdeskjet 656c. The printer works fine on my window 98. I sent an e-mail to 'Installation support' at [email protected], but have not gotten a reply yet. I guess they even take Christmas off. I hope someone can help. The Administration Guide says I sould check the usb port. I am new to this OS, so I am little slow. And yes everything is plug in and the lights are on. Thanks.

I have a few questions for you.

1. When you say that Suse id's the printer correctly, do you mean that it autodetects it when you run the setup util, or does suse just have a driver in its list which you manually choose? (I have never set up a local paralell or usb printer on any of my linux boxes.)

2. Have you tried to print an ascii test page from the gui(I use printconf-gui on my redhat box, but there are others) where you setup the queue and everything?

3. If so, what happened? did the printer move at all? act like it wanted to print?

4. Are there any messages in your log files. i.e. /var/log/messages which seem to be about the printer or USB?

5. Look at /var/log/dmesg, which is a boot log, is there any mention of a usb failure of some type?

6. Are you daisy chaining the printer off of another usb device, like a zipdrive or something?

7. When in windows, does the printer give any feedback to the driver, like low toner state or something? If so, could it be sending that message? This might screw up the printing, if the driver for linux doesn't know how to deal with it. (Just making this one up, but, maybe.)

The answers to these, should give enough info for someone to help you a bit more. I'm sure Suse support will want some of this info as well, unless they already know a solution for the problem from a previous incident.

Good Luck,

IchNiSan

Have you installed CUPS?

Hi fred,

Your printer should be working now, SuSE already support your printer.
You might need to read your manual book again chapter 8 Printer Operation(including CUPS).
Or you need to know about your Printer(or others) check out this site http://hardwaredb.suse.de/productSea...VendorIDSearch