NEC900c no lpt1 port

when I try to type it in, the "enter driver" popup will not go away, it just acts like it is waiting for something else to be input. I tried "usbprn" and "usbprint" (there is a dll called that too), and same thing happens.

I have DeJe's usb driver installed, could that be messing up the usb port? Ill uninstall and check.

Okay, it was time to start from scratch. I have 3 Mobilepro 900 devices to try. One with HPC2000, one with CE.NET, one with Cmonex v2. The printer I was going to try was one I've never used, an HP Photosmart D5460. It is an HP PCL3 language device as well.

First...using the Mobilepro 900 with HPC2000 and the JetCet printer drivers 3.01 provided on the bonus disk...no problems. I didn't get any errors.



Using both Pocket Word and IE, when I went to print, the window above opened up and I selected HP PCL3 for the printer and for the port I selected USB2 Photosmart 5400 (which showed up after the printer was plugged into the USB port). The only limitation was the graphics printed in B&W and not in color when printing the web page...otherwise it was all okay.

Next I tried using Cmonex v2 and the standard NEC CE.NET machines. On both of them when I plugged in the printer I got this:



Nothing would work. It must be something to do with the driver software and the printer, because if I plug in my standard Deskjet printer or my Epson C60, then I get no alerts, no errors. And on both machines I can use my HP 6940 network printer without any errors as well.

Now on using Cmonex v2 and my D5460, I could not get nothing to print at all. Not using Pocket Word, Wordpad, or IE. When I went to give it the print command I would get an error "Unable to print. The printer cannot be found or is unavailable." Again, this is only for my D5460. I can print to other printers.

Interestingly, using the stock CE.NET Mobilepro, even though I would get the unidentified alert shown above, when using Wordpad, I would get this:



With this I could select the PCL3 printer and for the port I could choose USB2, even though it didn't recongize the printer when it was connected. And when I went to print, it printed fine. When I went to print from IE, I wouldn't get any print window to open at all, yet the page would still print fine....and in full color as well.

Nothing I did would fix the printer recognition problem under CE.NET, nor did any of the "Print Test Page" options work under either version of CE.NET either....I'm not sure what is going on.

Hope that sheds some light on things....

ADDENDUM: Out of curiosity, I installed a newer version of the Jetcet printer drivers which I had to manually install the files as they were written for ppc, I installed version 4.0/4.1 for PPC2002 (Wayback Machine again) and it runs on Cmonex v2 okay. At first it wouldn't print from an application, but it would print a saved file. I ran the program you see below and printed a file which printed fine. After that I was able to print from any application using Cmonex v2. I had to use Winwatch to scroll around the menu selections. It is quite advanced over the HPC version and you have to select which printer you are using for it to work. The install default is Canon. But I did select several files and they printed just fine. Interestingly enough, when it is printing it says on the main screen "Printing to LPT1:" even though we know there is no such thing on an HPC. BTW, while it prints fine, that Unidentified USB Device error still comes up whenever I plug in the printer. I just exit that window and it doesn't come back unless I replug it in again. Here is a screenshot of the main window when you bring up the program:





Attachments
----------------
JETCET4LPT1.jpg (31KB - 0 downloads)

From what I see here, the hp2000 jetcet seems to work the best.

Could there be some dll's that im missing?

I tried this with my other printer, a photosmart c5540 (it evidently also supports pcl3) with the same result.

Am tempted to try using the newest, 5.2 jetcet, but is there a way to get that one to work on my ce4.2 machine?

execheck will help here as it can check .exe files and .dll files to see if it is missing any files it needs... either for hpc2000 version or the later CE version of jetcet.

John

Edited by mr-mac 2009-10-01 10:36 AM

MarkG...the 5.1-5.2 Jetcet printer drivers will not work with the 900C, nor can you mod them enough to work...too many missing parts of the OS. That is why I tried the 4.1 version using the Wayback Machine to find them.

On my 900C, it didn't make any difference whether I used the HPC2000 version of the Westtek 3.1 drivers or the CE.NET version...neither worked using Cmonex for me. But it did work using the factory build of CE.NET.

All of this has led me to believe the problem lies in the differences of HPC2000 and CE.NET, and is entirely a software and not a hardware thing since it works so easily with my CE3 Mobilepro.

do I need any additional dlls for jetcet 4.1 to work?

Well, I did find out that although my machine was running ce4.2, it wasnt the most up to date build - it was OS 1.8.5. I updated it to 2.02. Some things look different (settings/control panel is a screen instead of a dropdown list, etc). However, the printing thing is still not working. Interestingly, I tried to install JETcet 4.1 on my 900c, and it wont install correctly - no program exe to launch, some files missing.

To check the download, I installed in on my Dell Axim (ce4.2.1081) and it installed fine.

So there seems to be something that the install doesnt like with the 900c.

Not sure where to go from here - should I try cmonex's v2? any thoughts/pros-cons over the factory os?

Other than the issue that Rich pointed out earlier (I don't bother to print from my MP or any of my WinCE devices, although I certainly have hundreds of pages of notes on them; they get sent/transferred around in my pseudo-paperless office world), I don't see why you shouldn't upgrade to Cmonex v2. At least it works!

I haven't digested your "OS 1.8.5" statement yet. I'm not a MP expert, but I didn't think NEC published a ROM upgrade themselves. Or is this some variant on Windows CE 4.2?

In any case, Cmonex has all the latest bootloaders, etc. on her site (needed to get to cmonex 2) as well as the ROM images to revert back to factory specs. Theoretically, you should be able to go back and forth without trouble (just with the caveat that there is a theoretical possibility that you can brick your unit if you don't follow her instructions carefully).

MarkG...the JetCet 4.1 install creates 2 cab files (normally hidden during install in the temp folder). You have to grab those two files from the temp folder and move them somewhere. Then in one of the CAB files is a setup.dll. Delete that file as it pertains to PPC2003 and not our HPC, otherwise it will not decompress when trying to install. You should then be able to copy both CAB files to the 900C and install them. It will create two folders in the programs folder. One that says Westtek and the other that says JetCet.

From the JetCet folder there are about a half dozen dlls and a single .exe file. Run that .exe (using Winwatch) and from configuration, select your printer. There are a bunch to choose from. Then after selecting the printer, at the main menu again, do a file print. That will confirm whether or not it will work. It takes about 20-30 seconds to dump the data to the printer.

Now you wil never need to go to that program again. By default, from any application, that will be your default print setup.

The other exe in the other folder is the print spooler which you can monitor your print queres in. I don't mind waiting, and didn't want to overtax the memory on my 900C, so during the default printer setup I disabled the spooling, and just do direct printing. But it does work if you have available memory and want to use it.

Again to anyone else reading this...the only reason I would jump through all these hoops is that there is printer support for HP Photosmart printers in the newer JetCet printer software than there is in the JetCet drivers provided with the original Mobilepro bonus CD. If the older JetCet works...then don't waste your time...

Well, this is ....fun. I ran the Jetcet 4.1 install, and can't find the .cab files to grab. Usually they end up residing in the /program files/activesync folder or in a program files folder from the manufacturer. Not in this case, however - they are not in either folder.

Rich, I checked the /Windows/Temp folder, and no cabs appear there - is that the folder youre referring to?

You can try \Documents and Settings\<your computer username>\Local Settings\Temp - but don't close the installer before checking there.

If you run UniExtract on the setup executable, you'll find the CAB files under "PPC2003\armv4" of the newly created directory containing the setup file's contents.

Edited by mscdex 2009-10-05 2:54 AM

Ah yes...UnExtract...great utility for those who have difficulty finding the hidden files....

Well I found those files in the PPC2003/armv4 folder, but they do not have a setup.dll file in them. The ini files in the installs list ppc2003 information. Is there something im missing? the installation exe is for jetcet 4.1.422.

Try to install the cab files and see if they work...if they do...wo wo! If not, then extract the individual components and manually copy them over...