Friday, April 14, 2006

Damn print server....problem

Its been so long ...and here i am blogging again. Been with too many things to think about that i forgot about blogging lately. Well, today is Holy Friday, and here i am facin this monitor and watching some CCNA tips from a LearnKey CD given to me by my friend from Globe Telecoms. Well. i just remember a week ago, i was there in Meter King Office tryin to make an old Infosmart printer server run in their network. The network was not that really complicated, but it was setup into 2 different networks, to protect the group of PC which access billing and inventory applications in windows 2000 SQL server. It was already 8 pm and I still this little white box is not running. I have to search for 5V/1A power adapter in Divisoria just to power up this thing. Well, it took me hours to find one 4.5V/1A, costing 500 pesos. I installed the Printer monitor software and let it run, and whoa!! and the HP printer was displayed but still the port status where it is connected is OFFLINE. Tried to directly connect the PC to it and still Port status is offline. I can detect the printer server, configure it, but the printer connected to it will not go online in the network. I have tested all ports but still the printer cannot be seen in the network. The printer config software uses NETBIOS to look for the printer server and the printer server communicates with other PC through IPX protocol. Already enabled IPX on all WinXP PC but the HP Printer is still offline. Then, at the last minute i decided to use ethereal to trace down what could be the possible problem. And there, it is....Printer server ARP and IPX broadcast is considered unknown by every Windows XP machine. Only a Windows 98 PC can identify the printer server, so it turns out that this box is of no use in a Windows XP network.Hmmm..too bad this old printer server is already obsolete and does not offer any firmware upgrade in its website. It was 9 pm when i left the place and goes straight to office for my graveyard shift.