I'm running mandrake 9.1, and i have a Canon BJC-250 (i know it's pretty old) it runs on a parrellel port, Mandrake has the drivers and stuff for it that part appears okay.

but when i boot mandrake up it turns my printer on and the printer wants paper if i give it paper it prints a load of garbage, it's not even text it's a load of unreconised characters it only does a line or two of this and then want another sheet to print the same stuff on.

i don't do a lot of printing, but it'd be nice not to switch my PC on a late a night and have a printer start banging and claning at you, & waste paper!

so does anyone know why this happens? or how to fix it?

also does anyone have the same problem?

maybe you have some garbage print job in the print que.
at the prompt, type
lpq
if you get some stuff you can take themoff the que with
lprm <print job number>
like lprm 343
you'll still have to clear stuff from your printers cache by turning off the printer.