I have a long-time client who still uses an Epson LX-300+ to print all of the company paychecks. Several years ago, I made this printer work on the network by setting up a small Dell PC with Debian and CUPS. The Windows workstation in accounting can access the shared printer and there have been no complaints.
I’ve been upgrading all of their Linux boxes to Manjaro and I was surprised when I couldn’t get this printer working. CUPS is working and sees all of the modern, network printers on the network, but it didn’t recognize the Epson installed on the local parallel port (I had to install a parallel PCI card).
They are still using the Debian PC (they need to print checks) so I was able to compare systems. On CUPS - ArchWiki it says:
To use a parallel port printer, the lp, parport and parport_pc
kernel modules are required
The Debian PC has all 3 of those kernel modules but my Manjaro box was missing the lp module so I added it to /etc/modules-load.d/modules.conf
Now, when I boot the Manjaro box, I get:
# dmesg | grep -i parport
[ 2.117319] parport0: PC-style at 0xd010 (0xd000), irq 16, using FIFO [PCSPP,TRISTATE,COMPAT,EPP,ECP]
[ 2.184248] parport0: Printer, EPSON LX-300+
[ 2.525195] lp0: using parport0 (interrupt-driven).
BUT CUPS still doesn’t see the printer.
I can manually add the printer in CUPS by entering a device URI of: parallel:/dev/lp0 and then it asks me for the driver and I select the “Epson LX-300+ Foomatic/ibmpro (recommended)” driver, which is the same driver the Debian box uses.
Everything looks fine in CUPS and the printer says “Idle”, but when I try to print a test page or anything else, it doesn’t respond. When I plug the printer back into the Debian box, it prints fine, same printer, same printer cable.
I feel like I’m missing something. Any ideas? Thanks!