Macintosh Guide: TroubleShooting: PrintShop

Located in the Basement of 155 Whitney Avenue, the PrintShop offers the most inexpensive printing in the area to Yale faculty, students, and administration. The PrintShop is more formally known as MIS Print Services, and can be reached at 436-6065. The PrintShop can handle almost any printing need, and inexpensivily as well. Tabloid pages can be printed for 4¢ a page, and full color Letter pages only cost $1.50. More pricing information is available by calling the PrintShop, but it is a better to go to the PrintShop before printing a document to find out what options are available.

The two most common PrintShop printers used to print Macintosh files are the Xerox Color LaserWriter (Fiery 5775) and the Xerox Docutech 135. The color printer can output 11" by 17" documents in full color, as well as print slides and make color copies. The DocuTech is a huge machine that can xerox, scan, print, collate, staple, and do just about anything else one would want to a document, including graphically editing postscript after it has been sent to the printer.

Printing to the Xerox Color Laser Printer
Xerox 5775 driver
LaserWriter driver
LaserWriter 8 driver
Printing to the DocuTech Laser Printer
LaserWriter driver
LaserWriter 8 driver
Picking up your Printouts from MIS
"Disk Full" error
FTP'ing documents to the PrintShop

Printing to the Xerox Color Laser Printer (Desktop Publishing Stations):

The Xerox Color Laserprinter is a color Laser Printer controlled by a Fiery 5775 computer that interprets Postscript into printed output. Print jobs sent to the Xerox Color Laserprinter are displayed on the MIS Print Queue where they are redirected to the Fiery controler. The Fiery processes the poscript file (which can take 30 minutes or longer for large print color prints) and then sends it to the color laserprinter, which prints the job. Between the time necessary to send a file from a Macintosh to the Print Queue and then to the Fiery, and the time needed to process the image, it could easily take over an hour to print a large color document.

Color laserprinting is not an exact science, and it is very difficult to get the colors displayed on a monitor screen to match the colors in the final output. Printers cannot print the entire range of colors that monitors can display. The ColorSync software installed on the Desktop Publishing stations is designed to compenstate for the color differences, but as of yet there is no printer profile available for the Xerox printer. The best method of correcting color is unfortuneatly trial and error. PhotoShop is an incredible tool for color correction; read the documentation for more information.

To print multiple copies of the same page to the color laserprinter, use the print dialogue box to set the number of copies. Because the colors may be off or the print area too small (leave a .25" margin around your page), it is usually a good idea to print a proof page first. If the output is satisfactory, resend the job with the appropriate number of copies set in the print dialogue box.

Three different printer drivers can be used to print to the Xerox color laser printer. The Fiery processor can handle any Postscript file, and the "Xerox 5775", "LaserWriter", and "LaserWriter 8" drivers can all generate a Postscript file that the Fiery can interpret. The "Xerox 5775" driver is a slightly modified copy of an older version of the standard "LaserWriter" driver. It contains an added "setup" button in the print dialog box that can control the print quality of the Fiery output. Some applications may be incompatible with the older version of the LaserWriter driver, in which case the "LaserWriter" driver will work perfectly well. PageMaker 5.0 and some other applications require that LaserWriter 8.0 be used to print.

Open the Chooser and select, "Xerox 5775", "WEB Services", and "Xerox Color Laserprinter" Close the Chooser and open the document to be printed Select "Page Setup..." from the File menu of the application: Select the appropriate paper type, orientation, and magnification. Turn on/off any printer effects or options you do not want and click "OK" Select "Print.." from the File menu of the application: Set the number of copies and range, and make sure "Color/Grayscale" is selected. Leave "Cover Page" set to "no" and the "Paper Source" and "Destination" set to "Paper Cassette" and "Printer", respectively. The "Setup" button allows you to set the print quality of the output (Photo, Mixed, or Graphics). Once you are sure all the printer options are set correctly, click "Ok" to begin sending the document to the printer. Each Letter-sized page costs $1.50, so be sure you have not made any mistakes. It is usually a good idea to print a draft copy to a normal laserwriter to check for any problems.
Open the Chooser and select, "Laserwriter", "WEB Services", and "Xerox Color Laserprinter" Close the Chooser and open the document to be printed Select "Page Setup..." from the File menu of the application: Select the appropriate paper type, orientation, and magnification. Turn on/off any printer effects or options you do not want and click "OK" Select "Print.." from the File menu of the application: Set the number of copies and range, and make sure "Paper Source" and "Destination" are set to "Cassette" and "Printer", respectively. Click the "Options" button and make sure "Color/Grayscale" is selected. Once you are sure all the printer options are set correctly, click "Ok" to begin sending the document to the printer. Each Letter-sized page costs $1.50, so be sure you have not made any mistakes. It is usually a good idea to print a draft copy to a normal laserwriter to check for any problems.
Open the Chooser and select, "Laserwriter", "WEB Services", and "Xerox Color Laserprinter" Click the "Setup" button and make sure the current PPD is set to "Generic", then click "Ok" Close the Chooser and open the document to be printed Select "Page Setup..." from the File menu of the application: Select the appropriate paper type, orientation, and magnification. Turn on/off any printer options you do not want and click "OK" Select "Print.." from the File menu of the application: Set the number of copies and range, and make sure "Paper Source" and "Destination" are set to "Cassette" and "Printer", respectively. Click the "Options" button and make sure "Color/Grayscale" is selected. Once you are sure all the printer options are set correctly, click "Ok" to begin sending the document to the printer. Each Letter-sized page costs $1.50, so be sure you have not made any mistakes. It is usually a good idea to print a draft copy to a normal laserwriter to check for any problems.

Printing to the DocuTech Laser Printer:

The two DocuTech 135 printers in the Print Shop are the most impressive (and most expensive) printers in the Print Shop. They can print out 600dpi tabloid pages at a rate of 135 pages a minute, and can scan pages nearly as fast. Although they are designed for large and complex print jobs, they are quite cabable of printing any poster, senior project, or other job sent to them.

The DocuTech Laserprinter is a computer within itself. Print jobs sent to the Print Shop are displayed on the MIS Print Queue where they are redirected to the DocuTech's own queue. The DocuTech processes the poscript file (which usually takes less than a minute) and prints the job. The DocuTech is only capable of printing single-color (black) pages, but its 600 dpi resolution creates beautiful greyscale graphics. Greys on screen do not always correspond to a similar shade on paper, if you will be printing greyscale images or screens to the DocuTech, it is a good idea to first print out a range of (labeled) grey levels first to see what the final output will look like. PhotoShop is an incredible tool for changing brightness, contrast, and grey levels of an image; read the documentation for more information. The DocuTech requires a .25" margin around the page (it cannot print to the edge of the paper).

Two different printer drivers can be used to print to the DocuTech laser printer. The printer can handle any Postscript file, and the "LaserWriter", and "LaserWriter 8" drivers both generate a Postscript file that the DocuTech can interpret. The "LaserWriter" driver produces a generic Postscript file, and the "LaserWriter 8" driver uses a PPD to produce a Postscript file that includes information specific to the DocuTech. PageMaker 5.0 and some other applications require that LaserWriter 8.0 be used to print.

Open the Chooser and select, "Laserwriter", "WEB Services", and "PrintShop" Close the Chooser and open the document to be printed Select "Page Setup..." from the File menu of the application: Select the appropriate paper type, orientation, and magnification. Turn on/off any printer effects or options you do not want and click "OK" Select "Print.." from the File menu of the application: Set the number of copies and range, and make sure "Paper Source" and "Destination" are set to "Cassette" and "Printer", respectively. Click the "Options" button and make sure "Color/Grayscale" is selected if you are printing greyscale images. Once you are sure all the printer options are set correctly, click "Ok" to begin sending the document to the printer.
Open the Chooser and select, "Laserwriter", "WEB Services", and "PrintShop"
Click the "Setup" button. If the current PPD is not set to "Xerox DocuTech 135 x2010.130", click "More Choices" and then click "Select PPD". The correct PPD to use for the DocuTech is "Xerox DocuTech 135 x2010.130". Select it and then click "Ok". Click "Ok" again to leave the Setup dialogue. Make sure Background Printing is Off.
Close the Chooser and open the document to be printed
Select "Page Setup..." from the File menu of the application:

Select the appropriate paper type, orientation, and magnification. Turn on/off any printer options you do not want and click "OK"
Select "Print.." from the File menu of the application:

Set the number of copies and range, and make sure "Paper Source" and "Destination" are set to "AutoSelect" and "Printer", respectively. Click the "Options" button and make sure "Color/Grayscale" is selected if you are printing greyscale images. PageMaker and some other applications use a modified "Print..." dialogue box that contains many more print options. Make sure that the DocuTech PPD is selected, and set any of the additional print options you would like activated.
Once you are sure all the printer options are set correctly, click "Ok" to begin sending the document to the printer.

Picking up your Printouts from MIS:

After sending the print job to the PrintShop, walk up to 155 Whitney and take the stairs down to the basement (or walk around to the back of the building and enter the basement-level entrance). If the building is closed, walk to the basement entrance and use the Blue Phone to call MIS (432-6065) and ask them to let you in. Print Jobs only remain in the PrintShop's print queue for about a day. If you cannot go to 155 Whitney immediatelly after sending the print job, call MIS and explain.

For large print jobs, you will need to fill out a print order form, detailing the type of paper, number of copies, time of completion and pick-up, place of delivery (for departmental orders), and any post-printing work that might need to be done (binding, cutting, folding, etc). Small (and quick) jobs can usually be handled immediately, if MIS isn't busy.

"Disk Full" error:

On rare occasions, you might get a "disk full" error when printing to the Print Shop. This simply means that the disk is full, it does not mean you can't print. Printing jobs meant for the DocuTech printer first go to the Print Shop print queue, but they are sent to "classq" when they are activated. "classq" is a unix box that holds a queue for the DocuTech printers, jobs sre directed to one or the other DocuTech from classq. Print jobs can be sent directly to classq (bypassing the full PrintShop que) by selecting "classq" in the "CIS print services" zone. Make sure you tell MIS that you sent your job directly to classq, not the PrintShop print queue.

FTP'ing documents to the PrintShop:

It is possible to send print jobs to MIS Printing Pervices via FTP, as long as the document is a Postscript File. To create a postscript file, select "File" in the Destination area of the "Print..." dialogue box. Click "Save" to save the document as a Poscript file. The classq computer discussed above allows FTP logins; Postscript files can be placed directly into the print queue. Call or walk to MIS Print Services for more information.