Ladies & Gents,

I have been trying to get an HP Designjet 600 to work with Debian Testing (Jessie). It is reported to not be supported but there is a driver in cups for it called

ModelName "DesignJet 600 pcl"
PCFileName "dsgnjt600pcl.ppd"

The driver seams to come in the cups-filters package.

The printer will print a test page but the process pegs one core at 100%. I have tried to locate the maintainer for the driver but so far have had not joy.

The plotter works fine with the windows driver in a win7-vm but I would really rather use the plotter straight from Debian without having to save the file and print from the vm.

I am not a programmer but is there anyway I can get more info to pass on to the maintainers if I can locate them?

Thanks

Without feedback from the author(s), we can't really tell you WHAT they may need to do further enhancements/maintenance.

However...you may want to consider HPLIP, from HP:
http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/about.html

..while not 'official'...it's close. And, it seems to support and have drivers for, the Designjet 600:
http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web...jet/index.html

Thanks TBOne,

HPLIP does not actually support the Designjet 600 look at
http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web...gnjet_600.html

I actually gave up on the printer. It must have some kind of hardware issue that I don't have the time or inclination to resolve because I can't get it to print in the center of the paper. I have spent 3 days messing with it and I am done. But thanks for the effort on your part to try and help.

Actually, it DOES....what is on that page is HP's stance on OFFICIALLY SUPPORTING that device under Linux. While most of that data, programs, and PPD files comes from HP and their programmers, if you call HP's support line and ask for help with HPLIP, you will get told 'No'..hence, it being marked as 'unsupported'.

The PPD files and other information are there, and the device DOES show up in my list-of-devices (I use HP as well).

Then maybe the file I mentioned above comes from HP. I already have hplip installed from the debian repos (testing Jessie). I have to hook the printer up with a usb-parallel adapter. Hplip does not detect the printer hooked up that way. I had it installed through cups using the file mentioned before.

I have also tried to locate the ppd from a win7 install but the windows driver does not seem to use one, I forget the extension of the files for it. I found the ppd's for the other installed printers in the win box but none for the 600 with the driver installed.

I know HPLIP *THINKS* it needs a USB cable...but if it's a network device, you don't need it, and can configure it manually. After you run HPLIP, click Device->Setup Device. Then click the "Network" option, and select "Show advanced options", then click the "Manual Discovery" button. Enter your printer IP address there. From there, you should be able to go through the rest of the options.

I set up a plotter not long ago, and it worked fine...I'm using HPLIP 3.13.11. If your only option is the USB/Parallel cable to print, I'm not sure what to tell you there. I've used USB to Serial converters before, and they can be twitchy, especially when connected to a printer...may be the same thing with parallel. The 600 should have serial and parallel standard...have you tried the serial connection, to see if it makes a difference to the HPLIP program and printing in general?
This page seems to have PPD's and other files for CUPS:
http://www.pfoertsch.net/wiki/index.php/Main/CuPsddk

..for both PCL and raster. Perhaps they will help...there are installation notes in the README file in the .gz file, along with the raw source for the PPD and drv files, which you can compile with the CUPS compiler "ppdc"

No jet-direct card in plotter
No serial port on laptop
the usb-parallel works fine for the virtualbox win-xp & 7 vm's on the laptop

And like I said the plotter has some hardware issues and won't print in the center of the paper so.......back burner

That's why I suggested a USB to serial converter.
My curiosity about that would be, "Does Windows have a driver for that USB-Parallel device?" If so, that may explain why it works/is detected in Windows and not in Linux.
Ah..you had said it didn't print in the middle of the paper...not that it COULDN'T.