NEW SOFTWARE RELEASE ==================== Product involved: NPS 550R, NPS 650, AXIS 150/152, AXIS 540/542, AXIS 540p/542p, AXIS 640/642, AXIS 560, AXIS 660 Specific software: Release date: Aug 02, 1996 Release type: PRODUCTION Software version: 5.20 Software media: NPS550r Prom Low 2 Mbit, 120ns Prom High 2 Mbit, 120ns NPS650 Prom Low 2 Mbit, 120ns Prom High 2 Mbit, 120ns AXIS150/152 Flash AXIS540/542 Flash AXIS540p/542p Flash AXIS640/642 Flash AXIS560 Flash AXIS660 Flash Software checksum: NPS550r Prom Low 6B00 Prom High B095 NPS650 Prom Low 2B00 Prom High 75D5 AXIS150/152 Flash AXIS540/542 Flash AXIS540p/542p Flash AXIS640/642 Flash AXIS560 Flash AXIS660 Flash Last preceding release: NPS550r 5.02 NPS650 5.02 AXIS150/152 4.25 AXIS540/542 5.16 AXIS540p/542p 5.16 AXIS640/642 5.16 AXIS560 5.15 AXIS660 5.12 Flash loading instructions: See flash.txt document --------------------------------------------------------------------- Easy Release Description: 1. For AXIS 150/152 NDS-support has been added. 2. Enhanced flash loading support for the complete "AXIS"-series (not NPS) enabling the print server software to be upgraded over the network via IPX/SPX. 3. The AXIS 150/152 test page has been updated. 4. Products with AppleTalk. The problem with that the printer didn't show up in the HP Zoner application for Macintosh is now solved. 5. Products with AppleTalk. When the print job terminated just after start, it could result in hanging of the print server. This problem is now solved. 6. Improved functionality in LLC type II connection-oriented communication to increase the stability of the NetBEUI and SNA protocols. 7. Support for TBCP, binary mode printing, have been added in the AppleTalk application. 8. Memory space used by logical printer is now de-allocated properly. 9. Changes in BOOTP implementation solves problems with corrupt transmit packets in AXIS 660 version 5.12. 10.The function of reading and writing to the buffer in the serial port is removed when using FTP, i.e. the commands "get" and "put" are not supported for the serial port. Reading back information during a reverse telnet session is still supported. 11.AppleTalk: Using parameter ALOGIC it is now possible to select LPT1, LPT2 or COM1 as printer destinations. 12.Enhanced protection against corrupt Ethernet packets. 13.The default parallel port speed setting of parameters L1_CENTR and L2_CENTR has been changed from STNDRD to HISPEED. 14.User name on NetWare banner page now fits on the page. 15.Changes in timing for FAST mode and HIGHSPEED mode on the parallel port. 16.NetWare. Problems with extra garbage characters at the end of print jobs has been solved. This occurred most frequently when running the print server in RPRINTER mode. 17.The status reporting from the serial port now works correct. 18.Problems with missing and extra characters in the reverse data stream from the serial port is now solved. 19.T-R MAC: Frequency error detection has been filtered for better interoperability. 20.T-R MAC: A case in token contention (network problem situation) has been corrected. 21.T-R MAC: Where print servers previously operated correctly with other equipment at Early Token Release, they did not themselves use Early Token Release. The print servers now transmit using Early Token Release. This gives a higher ring performance. 22.Reverse Telnet. Problems related to opening and closing of sessions under normal and reset conditions are now solved. 23.When the print session was terminated the print server typically died. This could happen for all protocols and applications. 24.Axis MIB-file in NPS 550R has been removed. The file can be fetched on the Axis WWW-site, from another Axis print server or from Axis BBS. 25.Lost print jobs. General problem in TCP regarding advertised window size has been corrected. This caused probably an abrupt termination during printing, resulting in that the print job was not completed or lost. 26.AppleTalk. When adding an AppleTalk printer with NetPilot, the new printer declared itself two times on the network. Now it is declaring itself only once. 27.IPX, ZAP were previously using packet type 0. This is now changed to type 4. It caused problems with newer routers where packets were lost. 28.Solved problems in LPD. Print jobs where not terminated correctly. Problems were found in UNIXWARE but possibly other lpd environments as well. 29.TCP/IP. The Time To Live (TTL) has been changed from 255 to 64 seconds. 30.Added extra functionality to parameters L1_BSYTM, L2_BSYTM, C1_BSYTM. When set to zero all status reporting is disabled. Recommendation: - An update to this release is recommended if there have been any problems. Best regards AXIS COMMUNICATIONS AB ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Appendix A - DETAILED TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION OF RELEASE App A Product involved: NPS 550R, NPS 650, AXIS 150/152, AXIS 540/542, AXIS 540p/542p, AXIS 640/642, AXIS 560, AXIS 660 Software version: 5.20 1. NDS-support have been added for AXIS 150/152. 2. Software update over the network have been added for AXIS 150. 3. The AXIS 150/152 test page has been updated. AXIS 150 now has the same layout as the rest of the print servers with 5.xx software. Some details have been changed including phone number, www-location and sales areas. 4. Products with AppleTalk. If the parameters ATYPE_1, ATYPE_2 and ATYPE_3 were all left blank, the printer didn't show up in the HP Zoner application for Macintosh. 5. Products with AppleTalk. If a print job was terminated just after it was started, when printing from a Macintosh, this could result in hanging the print server. 6. Corrected some errors in LLC type II connection-oriented communication. This will increase the stability of the NetBEUI (used by RCONFIG and SMB) and SNA protocols. The corrected errors occurred most frequently at high network loads (many collisions => much resending) and with long client response times (much swapping, doing many things at the same time). In SMB the errors sometimes resulted in session shut-down. Unsolicited F bits are now reported by the correct FRMR flags. 7. Support for TBCP, binary mode printing, have been added in the AppleTalk application. The TBCP support is activated by setting the parameters 'BINARY' to 'YES' and 'BINARY_TYPE' to 'TBCP', which is the default setting. 8. When a new print job is started in logical printer, a structure with filter information is allocated. When the print job terminated the structure (12 byte) was not de allocated. The structure is now properly de-allocated. 9. The data that is used in a bootp transmit packet is located by a pointer. But instead of using the address the pointer refers to, the data where the pointer is located were used. Therefore the transmit packet were corrupted. 10.The function of reading and writing to the buffer in the serial port is removed when using FTP, i.e. the commands "get" and "put" are not supported for the serial port. Reading back information during a reverse telnet session is still possible. 11.AppleTalk: Using parameter ALOGIC it is now possible to select LPT1, LPT2 or COM1 as printer destinations. In previous release the selection was possible, but did not work for AppleTalk. 12.This release is more insensitive to corrupt Ethernet packets. This was achieved by minor changes in the Ethernet MAC layer. 13.Changed the default values of L1_CENTR and L2_CENTR from STNDRD to HISPEED. 14.The module generating PostScript banner page now calculates the length of the user name and adjusts the font, so that the name fits on the page. 15.The parallel port speed FAST now follows the IBM/Lexmark specification for Fast Byte protocol. This requires that the printers support Fast Byte. An advantage, is that printers supporting Fast Byte will print much faster than before. The maximum burst data speed is now about 700kB/s with the Lexmark Optra printer. The port speed HIGH is also upgraded to conform to the latest IEEE specification. If you used FAST before use the new HIGH speed setting instead, it is faster than the old FAST mode and should work with all printers that worked with the old FAST mode. 16.NetWare. Problems with extra garbage characters. If an IPX packet is smaller than the minimum size it is padded. Before we used the padded size as the actual data size. Therefore extra bytes where sometimes added at the end of print jobs. This is now corrected and the correct data size is always used resulting in no more garbage characters. 17.Status reporting on serial port now works in hand shake modes that use XON/XOFF exclusively or XON/XOFF in combination with RDY/BSY. Before, when using any form of XON/XOFF, the status reporting was unreliable. 18.Due to problems in physical/logical printer interface, incoming serial characters could be lost or extra characters added. The buffer handling between logical and physical printer has been revised to correct the problem. No reverse characters are lost with baud rates of 19200 baud or less and no characters are added. 19.T-R MAC: Frequency error detection has been filtered for better interoperability. When the product is active monitor, it has responsibility to monitor the used frequency. Previously, the product implemented a more sensitive level of frequency monitoring. In environments using e.g. fiber repeaters, this caused unexpected frequency error reports. Both the old and the new level of frequency error detection correctly conforms to the 802.5 standard. 20.T-R MAC: A case in token contention, where the ordinality of the station address, compared to the source of the received packet has been corrected. This would never cause any operational problems. 21.T-R MAC: Where print servers previously operated correctly with other equipment at Early Token Release, they did not themselves use Early Token Release. The print servers now transmit using Early Token Release. This would neither cause operational problems, nor any performance problems. 22.Several bugs in reverse telnet was corrected related mainly to opening and closing of sessions. Normally most problems occurred in busy networks or networks with poor signal quality. Problem areas where mainly when reset was received by the print server. Sometimes the print server didn't disconnect, when UNIX AIX systems rebooted, sometimes the print server died in between or during print jobs. 23.Bug in logical printer affecting all applications was removed. The print server typically died or stopped receiving data on a specific connection when the a print session was terminated. This affected all protocols and applications 24.Axis MIB-file in NPS550r has been removed. The file can be fetched on the Axis WWW-site, another Axis print server or from Axis BBS. To be able to keep the 2MBit proms in the NPS550r, the MIB file had to be removed. 25.Problem in TCP regarding advertised window size has been corrected. Previously when the window decreased below 1kByte it was deflated to zero by the print server. This is generally not good practice and caused probably an abrupt termination during printing, resulting in that the print job was not completed or lost. . 26.When adding an AppleTalk printer with NetPilot, the new printer declared itself two times on the network. This implied name collision and multiple printers showed up in the chooser on the Macintosh. The problem is now solved. 27.IPX, ZAP packets where previously sent with packet type 0, undefined packet type, causing problems with newer routers that refused to pass these packets. The packets are now sent with packet type 4. 28.Solved problem with LPD in UNIXWARE and possibly other lpd environments. Print jobs where not terminated and removed from the print queue on the host. The box also sent TCP packets with incorrect sequence numbers to the host, causing an infinite lockup in the communication between the host and the print server. 29.The Time To Live (TTL) for an IP packet has been changed to 64 seconds, which is the number of seconds used by most UNIX systems. 30.Added extra functionality to parameters L1_BSYTM, L2_BSYTM, C1_BSYTM. Before these parameters had a span of 0-255, meaning that when set to zero, busy and only busy and not paper out or other printer status messages, where reported without any delay. Now when set to zero all status reporting is disabled on all protocols. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Appendix B - SOFTWARE LIMITATIONS App B 1. Secondary printer function doesn't work when printing from AXPUW. 2. When downgrading the print server software from 5.xx to 4.xx the serial number may be lost. To restore the serial number follow the instructions below: 1. Log on as by using AXCFG configuration tool. 2. If using AXCFG, upload the parameter list in advanced mode. 3. Change the ETH_ADDR (Ethernet products) or NODE_ADDR (Token Ring products) to F0 00 0F XX XX XX where XX XX XX are the last six digits in the serial number. 4. From AXCFG download the setting. 5. Make factory default settings according to the User's Manual. Product involved: NPS 550R, NPS 650, AXIS 150/152, AXIS 540/542, AXIS 540p/542p, AXIS 640/642, AXIS 560, AXIS 660 Software version: 5.20