README File for IBM TCP/IP Network Port Monitor
Version 2.3
Contents
- Overview
- Software Requirements
- Recommendations for TCP/IP Network Printing
- Getting the Port Monitor
- Version History
- Installing the Port Monitor
- Getting Online Help
- Creating a Single Network Port
- Creating Multiple Network Ports
- Configuring a Network Port
- Removing a Network Port
- Migrating Existing Printers to the Port Monitor
- Reinstalling the Port Monitor
- Bidirectional Status Information
- Hints and Tips
- Getting IBM Service
- Trademarks and Copyrights
Overview
The IBM TCP/IP Network Port Monitor provides bidirectional printer
and job status information for these IBM network printers:
- IBM Infoprint 20 (printer and job status)
- IBM Infoprint 21 (printer and job status)
- IBM Infoprint 32 (printer and job status)
- IBM Infoprint 40 (printer and job status)
- IBM Infoprint 70 (printer and job status)
- IBM Infoprint Color 8 (printer status only)
- IBM Network Printer 12 (printer status only)
- IBM Network Printer 17 (printer status only)
- IBM Network Printer 24 (printer status only)
This README file contains information that you need to
install the port monitor. It also contains information
not included in the product documentation.
Before this port monitor was available, you printed to
TCP/IP-connected IBM network printers using the LPR port monitor
or the Standard TCP/IP port monitor. The IBM TCP/IP Network Port
Monitor provides several important advantages over these other
port monitors, including:
- You can find out the status of a printer before printing to it.
You know if a printer is working before you send an urgent
job to it.
- When a print job disappears from the printer's queue view, it
means the job has completed printing and is ready for you to pick
up. Before, it only meant the job had been fully sent to the
printer, but you had no information about how much of it had
actually been printed. Printer status is displayed on the
title bar of the printer's queue view.
- The Status column of the queue view provides detailed,
up-to-date status of a job on the printer. For example,
"Printing - Page 3 of 7 - Copy 2 of 5". Before, the only
information you had was that a job was "Printing". You only
saw this information until the print job had been sent, and
then the entry disappeared from the printer's queue view.
- You can cancel your print job on the actual printer, not just
on your workstation.
(Note: The Standard TCP/IP port monitor also lets you find out the
status of a printer before printing to it.)
Just like when you create an LPR port or a Standard TCP/IP port, you
create an IBM TCP/IP network port using the Add Printer process.
Software Requirements
The IBM TCP/IP Network Port Monitor runs on Windows 2000 (any
edition, including Professional) and Windows NT 4.0 (any edition,
including Workstation). However, clients on these systems
can benefit from the port monitor if they use a printer that was
defined on a Windows 2000 or Windows NT 4.0 machine and shared
to the network:
- Windows 2000
- Windows NT 4.0
- Windows NT 3.51
- Windows 98
- Windows 95
- Windows for Workgroups
Recommendations for TCP/IP Network Printing
IBM recommends that you print to your IBM network printers using a
client-server configuration rather than having each machine print
directly to the printer. There are many advantages to such a
configuration, including usability, management, and performance
advantages. For more detailed information and instructions for
setting up such a configuration, see the CSCONFIG.TXT file that
is shipped with this port monitor.
Note: In a client-server configuration, the IBM TCP/IP Network
Port Monitor is installed only on the print server. This can
be either Windows 2000 (any edition, including Professional)
or Windows NT 4.0 (any edition, including Workstation). All
of your clients link to the shared printer on the print server.
Getting the Port Monitor
You can get the port monitor from either:
- IBM Printing Systems home page on the World Wide Web:
http://www.ibm.com/printers
- The CD-ROM that came with the printer
Version History
To see the version history, navigate to the port monitor section
of the IBM Printing Systems home page on the World Wide Web.
Installing the Port Monitor
1. Open the Printers folder.
2. From the File menu, select Server Properties.
3. Select Ports.
4. Select Add Port. You see the Printer Ports window.
5. Select New Port Type. You see the Installing Print Monitor window.
6. Select the drive and path of the port monitor files to be
installed. This is usually either a location on a CD-ROM or the
location where you unpacked the file that you downloaded from
the Web.
7. Select OK. You see the Printer Ports window again.
8. Select IBM TCP/IP Network Port from the list of available
printer ports.
9. Select New Port. The port monitor files are installed
and the port monitor is started.
Note: If the IBM TCP/IP Network Port Monitor is already
installed, you see a message that the port monitor
could not be installed. Check the Printer Ports window
to see if the IBM TCP/IP Network Port Monitor is already
listed.
10. The IBM TCP/IP Network Port Monitor is now installed. To create
a printer that uses a port managed by the port monitor, go to
"Creating a Single Network Port".
Getting Online Help
The online help contains information about the port monitor,
including Frequently Asked Questions.
To see online help for the port monitor, do one of these:
- Open the file IBMNPDLG.HLP.
- Select Help while you are displaying any port monitor
dialog, for example:
Add an IBM TCP/IP Network Port
Add or Migrate a List of IBM TCP/IP Network Ports
Auto-Migrate Confirmation
Use Help Contents to see what information is available.
Creating a Single Network Port
1. Open the Printers folder and select Add Printer. You see the
Add Printer Wizard.
2. Select Next.
3. Select Next again.
4. Select Create a New Port, then select IBM TCP/IP Network Port
from the list of available printer port types. If it is not
in the list, you first need to follow the instructions above
to install the port monitor.
5. Select Next.
6. Select Add a Single IBM TCP/IP Network Port.
7. Select OK. You see the Add an IBM TCP/IP Network Port window.
8. Enter the network address of the printer. As an option, you
can also enter a name for the port you are creating.
9. Select OK. The port has now been created. You see the Printer
Ports window again.
10. Select Close. You see the Add Printer Wizard again. The
newly created port is highlighted and checked.
11. Select Next.
12. Continue with the rest of the Add Printer process to finish
creating your printer. See the README file for the printer driver
for information about how to perform this task.
Creating Multiple Network Ports
1. Open the Printers folder.
2. From the File menu, select Server Properties.
3. Select Ports.
4. Select Add Port. You see the Printer Ports window.
5. Select IBM TCP/IP Network Port from the list of available
printer ports.
6. Select New Port.
7. Select Add a List of IBM TCP/IP Network Ports or
Migrate a List of IBM Printers to IBM TCP/IP Network Ports.
8. Select OK. You see the Add or Migrate a List of IBM TCP/IP
Network Ports window.
9. Enter the name of your port list file. To see online help for
creating this file, select Help. In addition, you can use the
sample port list file IBMNPADD.TXT.
10. Select OK.
11. After the port list file has been processed, you see the
Add/Migrate Results window.
Configuring a Network Port
1. Open the Printers folder and select the printer that uses the
port that you want to configure.
2. Select the printer using mouse button 2.
3. Select Properties. You see the printer properties notebook.
4. Select Ports.
5. Select the port you want to configure.
6. Select Configure Port. You see the Configuring Port window.
7. Display each tab, making the appropriate changes as you go.
8. Select OK to save your changes and close the notebook.
Removing a Network Port
1. Be sure the port that you want to delete is not being
used by a printer.
2. Open the Printers folder.
3. Select any printer using mouse button 2.
4. Select Properties. You see the printer properties notebook.
5. Select Ports.
6. Select the port you want to delete.
7. Select Delete Port.
8. Select Yes to confirm that you want to delete the port.
Migrating Existing Printers to the Port Monitor
To migrate existing printer icons from the LPR port monitor or the
Standard TCP/IP port monitor to the IBM TCP/IP Network Port Monitor:
1. Open the Printers folder.
2. From the File menu, select Server Properties.
3. Select Ports.
4. Select Add Port. You see the Printer Ports window.
5. Select IBM TCP/IP Network Port from the list of available
printer ports.
6. Select New Port.
7. Select Automatically Migrate All IBM Printers to Use IBM
TCP/IP Network Ports.
8. Select OK. You see the Auto-Migrate Confirmation window.
9. Select whether you want to delete the LPR and Standard TCP/IP
ports that are no longer used after the migration.
10. Select OK.
11. When auto-migration is finished, you see the Auto-Migrate Results
window.
Reinstalling the Port Monitor
Notes:
- The reinstallation process is not controlled by the operating
system, as the installation process is. Therefore, it is
not standard. In general, the operating system does not
support the concept of reinstalling a port monitor.
- Multiple copies of the port monitor cannot exist concurrently.
Installation of a newer version overwrites the older version.
To install a later version of the port monitor:
1. Select Start.
2. Select Settings.
3. Select Control Panel.
4. Select Administrative Tools.
5. Select Services. You see the Services window.
6. Select the Print Spooler service from the list.
7. From the Action menu, select Stop.
8. From the DOS command prompt, copy all the port monitor files
except MONITOR.INF into the system directory on your machine.
The directory can have any path, but is usually
\winnt\system32.
9. From the Action menu on the Services window, select Start to
restart the spooler.
10. You have now reinstalled the later version of the IBM TCP/IP
Network Port Monitor. All ports managed by the older version
are now automatically managed by the newer version.
Bidirectional Status Information
The bidirectional status information is in the printer's
queue view:
1. Open the Printers folder.
2. Select the printer whose queue view you want to see.
The printer must use an IBM TCP/IP network port.
3. Select the printer using mouse button 2.
4. Select Open. You see the printer's queue view.
5. For printer status, look at title bar of the window. For
example, if your printer is named "My IBM printer" and the
printer is offline, the title bar shows:
"My IBM printer - Off Line".
6. For job status (only for printers that support job status,
such as the IBM Infoprint 20), look at the Status column
of the queue. By system default, the status column is not
wide enough to display all of the detailed status. Drag
the right side of the column to the right to make the
column wider.
Hints and Tips
1. The operating system, not the port monitor, controls the
Pages and Size columns of the queue view. Unfortunately,
the values in these columns report the number of pages or
bytes "sent", not the number "printed". The fact that a
job has been fully sent does not tell you how much of it
has actually been printed, so IBM recommends that you use the
Status column instead of the Pages and Size columns for more
useful information.
2. The operating system, not the port monitor, controls some of
the text in the Status column. The port monitor tries to
match the status that it shows with the other text in the
column that it cannot control. However, at least one
restriction exists: you might see the word "Printing" in
the Status column when the printer is not currently printing
the job.
Getting IBM Service
The methods for getting IBM service for IBM network printers
are:
- Technical Service:
1-800-358-6661
- WWW home page:
http://www.ibm.com/printers
- Electronic BBS:
Montreal (514) 938-3022
Toronto (905) 316-4255
Vancouver (604) 664-6464
Trademarks and Copyrights
These terms are trademarks of their respective companies in the
United States or other countries or both:
IBM, Infoprint IBM Corporation
PCL Hewlett-Packard Company
PostScript Adobe Systems, Inc.
Microsoft and Windows are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation
in the United States, other countries, or both.
UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States, other
countries, or both and is licensed exclusively through
X/Open Company Limited.
Other company, product, and service names may be trademarks or
service marks of others.
(C) Copyright IBM Corporation 2000, 2002. All rights reserved.
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