CDF-PC Printers

Access rules and usage policies

CDF-PC operates and maintains four laser printers for student use: 2 Lexmark Optra S 2455 printers (lpssam1 and lpssam2, both in the Gernstein lab) and 2 HP LaserJet IIISi printers (printer1 in the Gernstein lab; and printer3 in the Kelly library lab. There is no longer a printer2, for historical reasons jobs sent to this queue will be printed by printer1.

These printers are for the exclusive use of CDF-PC users for printing related to their studies for the course for which they have obtained their account. Occasional minor personal printing may be tolerated, but any use intended for private financial gain is strictly prohibited. Any attempt to "pump" a printer for pages, or repeated printing of non-course material will result in zeroing of the user's print quota.

Follow all rules and instructions posted on the printers or in the lab!

Printer Specifications

The Lexmark Optra printers are high capacity (3,750 page), 24-page-per-minute, 1200dpi PostScript Level 2 laser printers with 32 Mb RAM and 133 MHz RISC processors. They are the default printers for all the workstations in the Gernstein lab. Computers at the north end default to lpssam1, those at the east and south side default to lpssam2. lpssam2 is located by the south entrance, lpssam1 is by the north entrance.

The HP LaserJet IIISi printers are heavy duty, high speed (17 pages per minute), 300 dpi PostScript Level 1 laser printers with 9 Mb RAM. They are ideally suited for large text print jobs. Because they are older PostScript level 1 printers, they cannot handle complex graphics images, and even moderate graphics can take several minutes to print. printer1 is located beside lpssam1 at Gernstein, printer3 is beside the workstations at Kelly library.

The Lexmark printers have a number of useful options, which can be selected in the printer dialog.

Display messages and problems

All our printers have multiple trays. Frequently the message panel on a printer will display "Tray X Empty". This is not an indication that the printer is not working, it is due to the fact that one or more of the trays are empty. When the printer has no more paper the message is "Load Paper".

If the green light is on, (and the orange "on-line" light, for the IIISi's) the printer is working properly.

If the green light is flashing the printer is processing a job. If your job is in the queue it will eventually print.

Check the print queue by double clicking the "Printers" folder on your desktop and double
clicking the printer's icon if you are not sure of the status of your job.

Any problems with this printer or the computer system should be reported to the
administrators by sending electronic mail to admin.

Error messages and what you can do about it:

Green light not on -- Send mail to admin.
Orange "On-line" light not on (printer3 only) -- Press the button marked "On-line". If the light does not come on, send mail to admin.
"Load Paper" -- Send mail to admin
"Paper Jam" -- Send mail to admin.
"Toner low" -- toner cartridge is running low, For printer3 if the green light is not on press "Continue" , otherwise leave it alone. Send mail to admin. if the print quality is poor.

Do NOT attempt to clear paper jams, shove paper into any open orifices, remove paper from the paper trays or reconfigure printer settings. Above all, do not unplug any wires or cables attached to the printers, (or any of the computer equipment). The anti-theft alarm will sound LOUDLY and Metro Police will be alerted.

Printer Options

The Lexmark printers (lpssam1 and lpssam2) can perform "n-up" printing, i.e. resize n pages of output onto a single piece of paper. After selecting the printer in the printer dialog, press the "Properties" button. From the "Advanced" tab double click "Multipage printing" under the "Document Options" section. Select a suitable value for n, the preview will indicate how the virtual pages will be oriented on the paper. Note that higher values will reduce the size of the type, in general values above 4 will be useful only as overview or thumbnail pages. (Note: some programs bypass the native printer control dialog, and this feature can't be used. Some examples of these programs are Acrobat Reader and GhostView.) One side of a piece of paper counts as one print quota page, the number of "virtual" pages is irrelevent.

Both the Lexmark and the HP printers can perform "duplex" printing, (i.e. printing on both sides of the page), but the option is only easily selectable for the Lexmark printers. On the properties window as described above, select the option to print on both sides, and indicate if the axis of rotation should be the long side of the page (best for portrait page layouts) or short (better for landscape mode). Each side of a duplex job counts as one page for print quota purposes, but jobs with odd numbers of pages (i.e. the final side is blank) are accounted correctly.