I’m having a problem that I can’t seem to solve. I was hoping one of you could enlighten me.
On our network here at work (ethernet, cat5) we have a print server (HP JetDirect 500x) in our wood shop with a thermal label printer (Intermec 3400D) attached to it. The cable run is very close to (and possibly over) the 100 meter max cable run limit.
We have two kinds of labels we print to this printer, “normal” and “big”. The normal label is 4″ horizontal by 1.5″ vertical, and the big label is 4″ horizontal by 2″ vertical. The normal label fits 9 lines of text and the big label fits 12 lines of text. The normal label prints fine in the wood shop, we’ve never had a problem with it. We just started using the big label in the wood shop but it never prints more than 10 lines of text – if 12 lines are sent, the final 2 are not printed. I can reproduce the problem with every label printer I put on this print server. If I move the print server to a different location (with a much shorter cable run) I still have the problem. It’s definitely not the label printer or the label program, because the big labels print fine to any other location outside of the wood shop.
So what I’m left with is a problem with the print server itself. I replaced that print server with a brand new one and attached it to the network in my office and the big labels print perfectly. I take the new print server to the wood shop and try to print the big labels…but ONLY 10 LINES WILL PRINT. I take this same brand new print server and put it back in my office…AND ONLY 10 LINES WILL PRINT. It’s like putting the print server in the wood shop permanently corrupts it somehow.
This really doesn’t make sense and it’s starting to aggravate me. Have you ever heard of a situation like this? Could using the print server on a cable run that possibly exceeds the 100 meter limit permanently damage a print server?
