NEW SOFTWARE RELEASE ==================== Products involved: AXIS 570, AXIS 670, AXIS 570 MIO, AXIS 670 MIO Specific software: Release date: Oct 23, 1997 Release type: TEST Software version: 5.33.12 Software media: AXIS 570 Flash AXIS 670 Flash AXIS 570 MIO Flash AXIS 670 MIO Flash Software checksum: AXIS 570 Flash AXIS 670 Flash AXIS 570 MIO Flash AXIS 670 MIO Flash Last preceding release: AXIS 570 5.33 AXIS 670 5.33 AXIS 570 MIO 5.33 AXIS 670 MIO 5.33 Flash loading instructions: See UpgrInfo.txt document Release document: 1.00 --------------------------------------------------------------------- IMPORTANT! ========== When upgrading from release 5.33.4 or older, the print server will set all parameter values back to factory defaults. To avoid loosing your settings it is recommended that you upload the parameter list to a file using FTP before upgrading the Print Server software. When the new software is installed to the print server, the original parameter values may be restored by downloading the parameter file using FTP. If the original release was 5.23.4 or older, two SNA parameter names must be renamed before downloading the parameter list. Change the parameter names HOSTADDR to H1_ADDR and HOST_SAP to H1_SAP. If you don't have access to FTP, it is recommended that you print the parameter list before installing the new software. The printout is useful when setting the old parameter values. Printing the parameter list is done by pressing the test button twice. NOTE1: ===== The non SNA/IBM part of this release is based on Print Server software release 5.36. See Release Descriptions below for information on changes made to the non SNA/IBM parts of the software in the 5.36 release. NOTE2: ===== When upgrading to this release via FTP, it is necessary to enter 'FLASH' in capital letters. At the FTP command line enter: put FLASH --------------------------------------------------------------------- Easy Release Description: 1. An IBM Emulator problem causing corrupt printout when changing from PCL to USER printer bank has been corrected. 2. A SNA LU3/3174 problem causing printout to be corrupted after 2000-3000 pages has been corrected. 3. An IBM emulator problem causing too many Form Feeds (FF) to be sent to the printer has been fixed. 4. Support for configuration file loading via TFTP (Trivial File Transfer Protocol) has been added. 5. An IBM Parameter Handler problem making it impossible to change Printer Emulation in twinax (5494) mode has been corrected. 6. A SNA LU6.2/5494 problem making it impossible to VARY ON AS/400 printer devices after VARY OFF has been corrected. 7. A SNA LU6.2/5494 flow control problem causing print jobs to hang has been corrected. 8. A SNA LU4/5494 problem related to end of job handling has been corrected. 9. Handling of SNA LU4/5494 Intervention Required (End of Forms) has been improved. 10. A SNA LU1/LU3/LU4 problem causing the Job Separation Timer not to start has been corrected. 11. In SNA 5494 mode the Print Server will now register as a 5494 controller model #2, not model #1 as before. 12. An IBM emulator problem causing the first line on some pages to be lost or truncated has been corrected. 13. An IBM emulator problem causing garbled printout when using GENERIC, IBM_PRO, EPSON_FX or EPSON_LQ printer drivers in conjunction with 3812 or 3816 printer emulation has been corrected. 14. An IBM Extended Emulation problem causing String Substitution (MSTR/SSTR) not to work has been corrected. 15. An IBM emulator problem causing incorrect printout orientation when changing between Portrait and Landscape has been corrected. 16. A SNA LU6.2/5494 problem causing print jobs to hang has been corrected. 17. Any changes of the SNA parameters NODE_ID, NODE_SAP or H1_SAP will now be immediately reflected on the Test Page. 18. Support for XID3 handling in SNA LU1/LU3/3174 mode has been added. This will enable the Print Server to connect to the Novell NetWare for SAA gateway release 2.2 and other servers/gateway that use XID3 negotiation when establishing the link. 19. An IBM emulator problem with the PCL Printer Driver causing the first line on the first page in a job to be lost has been corrected. 20. A rare IBM emulator problem causing the Print Server to change the font settings in the printer in the middle of a print job has been corrected. 21. A SNA LU1/LU3 problem causing the Print Server to acknowledge the print job before the complete job was sent to the printer has been corrected. 22. SNA pacing logic is modified in order to achieve a more relaxed traffic of data packets. 23. Responses to SNA Data Flow Requests modified. 24. When print data from the SNA System Services Control Point is received, a more appropriate negative response is returned. 25. The #, @ and $ characters are now accepted in APPN names. 26. A number of improvements and added checks for invalid packets in the LLC stack. 27. The LLC stack will now send LLC RR Poll every 15 seconds instead of every 40. 28. A NETBIOS memory management problem is corrected. 29. Improved memory handling in HTTP-setup. 30. A parameter handling problem that could occur when changing IBM Printer Driver is corrected. 31. A low level Ethernet problem with large packets is corrected. 32. A SNA LU3/3174 problem causing the Print Server to respond with a "Function Not Supported" negative acknowledge has been corrected. 33. A SNA LU4/5494 problem causing aborted print jobs has been corrected. 34. A SNA LU4/5494 problem causing the autoconfiguration process not to complete successfully has been corrected. 35. A SNA LU4/5494 problem related to end of job handling has been corrected. 36. A Job Timeout problem has been corrected. This release is based on Print Server software release 5.36. The changes made in the 5.36 release is covered below: 1. Added support for NLSP, NetWare Link State Protocol 2. Improved handling of LPD systems sending the control file first. Handling of multiple file printing (lpr ). Changed the possible values of the LPD_BANN parameter from YES/NO to AUTO/LAST/OFF. Also, a few bugs in LPD which caused printing to fail in primarily the NT 4.0 environment have been fixed. 3. A problem with SPX passive connections, resulting in that the print server hangs is solved. 4. Reception of giant packets now handled correctly. Giant packets could cause the unit to hang. Only applicable on Ethernet models. 5. Corrected DEC>IBM character conversion filter. Some characters where not translated correctly. 6. Corrected bug inhibiting setting of valid ip-addresses containing 255 (e.g. 194.209.255.x). 7. Improvements made to the Token-Ring MAC layer. Recommendation: - An update to this release is recommended if any problems, related to the above changes, have been observed. Best regards AXIS COMMUNICATIONS AB ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Appendix A - DETAILED TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION OF RELEASE App A Products involved: AXIS 570, AXIS 670, AXIS 570 MIO, AXIS 670 MIO Software version: 5.33.12 1. An IBM Emulator problem causing corrupt printout when changing from PCL to USER printer bank has been corrected. The problem would cause the printout to overlap. 2. A SNA LU3/3174 problem causing printout to be corrupted after 2000-3000 pages has been corrected. The problem was related to SNA LU3 memory handling. 3. An IBM emulator problem causing too many Form Feeds (FF) to be sent to the printer has been fixed. This would in some cases cause one page to be separated into several. 4. Support for configuration file loading via TFTP (Trivial File Transfer Protocol) has been added. TFTP is an UDP/IP protocol enabling the Print Server to download the configuration file from a TFTP server on the network. 5. An IBM Parameter Handler problem making it impossible to change Printer Emulation in twinax (5494) mode has been corrected. 6. A SNA LU6.2/5494 problem making it impossible to VARY ON AS/400 printer devices after VARY OFF has been corrected. The cause of the problem was incorrect handling if LU6.2 BIS packets. 7. A SNA LU6.2/5494 flow control problem causing print jobs to hang has been corrected. The problem was related to LU6.2 SIGNAL/LUSTAT handling and occurred primarly when operating over WAN links. 8. A SNA LU4/5494 problem related to end of job handling has been corrected. Packets containing 0 bytes of data are now accepted when reaching the end of a LU4 print job. 9. Handling of SNA LU4/5494 Intervention Required (End of Forms) has been improved. Before the print job could sometimes hang when the printer reported Intervention Required. Also, IR handling when printing on more than one printer at the same time has been improved. 10. A SNA LU1/LU3/LU4 problem causing the Job Separation Timer not to start has been corrected. This would cause some page(s) at the end of a print job not to be printed until the next print job was sent to the Print Server. 11. In SNA 5494 mode the Print Server will now register as a 5494 controller model #2, not model #1 as before. The 5494 model #2 is the LAN-attached version. 12. An IBM emulator problem causing the first line on some pages to be lost or truncated has been corrected. This was a complex problem, related to when to send cursor positioning commands to the printer. It only occurred when using PCL printer drivers. 13. An IBM emulator problem causing garbled printout when using GENERIC, IBM_PRO, EPSON_FX or EPSON_LQ printer drivers in conjunction with 3812 or 3816 laser printer emulation has been corrected. In some rare cases the print job could even hang because of this problem. 14. An IBM Extended Emulation problem causing String Substitution (MSTR/SSTR) not to work has been corrected. Before, String Substitution would only work if MSTR and SSTR both started with string #0 and then progressed upward with no "holes" in the sequence. Also MSTR=DEL and SSTR=DEL would not work as expected. Now, any combination of MSTR and SSTR will work, as well as MSTR=DEL/SSTR=DEL. 15. Changing between Landscape and Portrait orientation within the same SNA print job could in some situations cause incorrect orientation of the printout. Changing orientation without sending FF (Form Feed) between the pages would cause the emulator not to send the new orientation setting to the printer. This problem is now fixed. 16. A SNA LU6.2/5494 problem causing print jobs to hang have been corrected. The problem was related to the handling of LU6.2 SIGNAL and LUSTAT packets. 17. Any changes of the SNA parameters NODE_ID, NODE_SAP or H1_SAP will now be shown correctly on the Test Page. Before, when changing any of these parameters, the change would not show up on the Test Page unless the Print Server was restarted. IMPORTANT: ========= When changing any of the SNA parameters NODE_ID, NODE_SAP and H1_SAP, the SNA stack will be shut down and then immediately restarted. This will cause all active sessions to be shut down. The reason for this is that changing any of these parameters could affect the stability of any active SNA sessions. It is recommended not to change any of these parameters while any host session is active. 18. Support for XID3 handling in SNA LU1/LU3/3174 mode has been added. The XID (eXchange station IDentification) negotiation is performed when establishing a link between two SNA NAUs. In the past, the XID3 format has been reserved for PU2.1- capable nodes. But today some servers, (Novell NetWare for SAA version 2.2), use XID3 when communicating with PU2.0 nodes as well. 19. An IBM emulator problem with the PCL Printer Driver causing the first line on the first page in a job to be lost has been corrected. This problem occurred primarily with HP5 printers. 20. An IBM emulator problem causing the Print Server to change the font settings in the printer in the middle of a print job has been corrected. The problem occurred when the printer buffer filled up, causing the Print Server to wait until the printer had consumed the data. After such a wait, the Print Server would in some cases send erroneous commands to the printer, instructing it to change font settings. The problem would occur when printer settings sent by the host were preceded by extended emulation parameter settings. 21. A SNA LU1/LU3 problem causing the Print Server to acknowledge the print job before the complete job was sent from the Print Server to the printer has been corrected. As the print job was acknowledged too early, the Print Server seemed to be idle/available waiting for the next job when it was still processing the previous job. 22. SNA pacing logic is modified in order to achieve a more relaxed traffic of data packets. The previous approach yielded situations when both the IBM host and Print Server competed for sending data simultaneously. This situation typically caused problems with 5494 emulation in WAN environments. 23. Responses to SNA Data Flow Requests modified. The FM Header bit in SNA RHs is now set for all DFC responses. Sending DFC responses without this bit set, could cause problems with some mainframe applications. 24. When print data from the SNA System Services Control Point is received, a more appropriate negative response is returned. Print data from LU 0 now yields a "1003 - Category not supported" instead of a "1007 - Function not supported" negative response. 25. The #, @ and $ characters are now accepted in APPN parameter names. This applies to the Network, LU and CP names used with 5494 emulation. 26. A number of improvements and added checks for invalid packets in the LLC stack. Sending of I PDUs is now delayed when the client has sent reject PDUs. 27. The LLC stack will now send LLC RR Poll every 15 seconds instead of every 40. The previous value caused the Token Ring MAC Source Route cache to time out and clear the routing table. This fact caused the next packet to be transmitted as a broadcast. 28. A NETBIOS memory management problem is corrected. 29. Improved memory handling in HTTP-setup. 30. A parameter handling problem that could occur when changing IBM Printer Driver is corrected. Some parameter values ended up with a "illegal value" when the printer driver was changed. 31. A rare low level Ethernet problem with large packets is corrected. This caused the Print Server to reject all incoming data packets. 32. A SNA LU3/3174 problem causing the Print Server to respond with a "Function Not Supported" negative acknowledge has been corrected. This problem typically occurred when small LU3 packets were sent to the Print Server. 33. A SNA LU4/5494 problem causing aborted print jobs has been corrected. This problem was related to the pacing count logic. 34. A SNA LU4/5494 problem causing the autoconfiguration process not to complete successfully has been corrected. This problem was related to LU 6.2 handshaking logic. 35. A SNA LU4/5494 problem related to end of job handling has been corrected. Although the print job was printed correctly, the job sometimes was not terminated from the AS/400 writers point of view. 36. A Job Timeout problem has been corrected. The Job Timeout function could expire in the previous release causing the current page to be ejected too early. This release is based on Print Server software release 5.36. The changes made in the 5.36 release is covered below: 1. Print server is now visible over routers in NetWare 4.11 using NLSP as routing protocol. 2. Some incompatibilities with hosts using LPD have been fixed: - When the control file is received last, the control block is handled correctly. - Multiple file printing (e.g. lpr -d ) is now handled, by transferring the control blocks when a new data file is received. - A problem which only was apparent with AIX systems (or other systems which reuses the same port instead of using a new one) was fixed. Improper handling of control blocks at an EOF was the cause. - When using filters and printing small jobs < 1Kbytes, the account information was sometimes not updated. Also, the parameter LPD_BANN now has three choices instead of two: AUTO: Print the banner page before the print job if the control file is sent before the data file, otherwise print the banner page after the print job. LAST: Always print the banner page after the print job. OFF: Do not print a banner page. 3. The number of passive connections are now limited to 20 so excessive connecting won't consume all available memory. 4. A giant packet is an Ethernet frame larger than the specified maximum frame size, 1518 bytes. Even though these kinds of frames are not allowed, they do exist on some networks. 5. Character 0x20 changed from 0x00 to 0x20, 0xA8 changed from 0x0F to 0x00, 0xAC changed from 0x00 to 0xAA, 0xAD changed from 0x00 to 0xC4, 0xAF changed from 0x00 to 0xC4, 0xB7 changed from 0x2D to 0xFA, 0xFF changed from 0x00 to 0x98. 6. No additional information. 7. Applicable to Token-Ring products: Network throughput optimizations in Token Ring MAC code are included in this release. The "ring insertion" sequence (e.g. at startup) is improved, which will give improved interoperability with modern MAUs. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Appendix B - SOFTWARE LIMITATIONS App B Products involved: AXIS 570, AXIS 670, AXIS 570 MIO, AXIS 670 MIO Software version: 5.33.12 1. The SNA stack is single host only. Multiple IBM hosts cannot access the Print Server simultaneously. 2. Although it is possible to define several logical units on the IBM host system, the AXIS 570/670 will only print one SNA job at a time. SNA Jobs are held in a print queue within the AXIS 570/670 and are processed on a first-come-first-serve basis. 3. The SNA parameters LU_NAME and CP_NAME must be equal. Products involved: AXIS 570 MIO, AXIS 670 MIO Software version: 5.33.12 4. After performing a hard or soft reset, via FTP, NetPilot or HTTP, the HP printer will show a message, "80 SERVICE (0007)", on the frontpanel display. Switch off and on the printer to clear the message. 5. After upgrading the MIO board the HP printer will show a message, "80 SERVICE (0101)", on the frontpanel display. Switch off and on the printer to clear the message. This release is based on Print Server release 5.36. The Software Limitations in the 5.36 release is detailed below: Products involved: AXIS 570, AXIS 670, AXIS 570 MIO, AXIS 670 MIO Software version: 5.33.12 1. If the IP-address of the print server is changed while one or more reverse telnet port is configured (set to something else than 0), the print server will have to be manually restarted. Products involved: AXIS 570, AXIS 670 Software version: 5.33.12 1. Secondary printer function doesn't work when printing from AXPUW. 2. There is a potential problem with bitronics printers when the parameter PRx_IN is set to AUTO. Under a very heavy load of print jobs from several protocols simultaneously, the AppleTalk protocol may interfere with the prior job. This is avoided if the parameter PRx_IN is set to NONE. 3. Print servers supporting bi-directional communication on the parallel port must be re-started if bitronics is changed from enabled to disabled (or vice versa) on the printer. This depends on that negotiation with the printer is done during power up. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Appendix C - AFFECTED MATERIAL App C 1( ) Product involved: AXIS 570, AXIS 670, AXIS 570 MIO, AXIS 670 MIO Software version: 5.33.12 Draft texts for manual updates: NPS Technical Reference Support for editable character tables added and the text in "AXIS HP-MIO TECH REF 1.1 ADDENDUM Editable character translation" shall be inserted in the NPS Technical Reference. Other: This release is covered in version 2.1 of AXIS 570/670 User's Manual, part no 14425. ----------------------------------------------------------------------