printer trouble with Brother HL-1110

[Member roland]

I post this old problem here although I have experienced it while running under previous releases. The Brother HL-1110 is a cheap monochrome laser printer with page limit issues related to the capacity of the toner drum but this is quite a new one and in any case it prints certain documents well including the test page.

On frequent occasions I am unable to print a pdf document usually but not exclusively consisting a single page. The orange error light flashes although paper supply is good. A test print after such a refusal invariably produces the test page print as expected.

qpdfview is the usual culprit and opening the same document using inkscape usually enables the document to be printed. Adobe reader 9 often fails to print and again inkscape usually rescues me. If I have a jpg image available cortresponding to the pdf this also provides a way of printing an otherwise unavailable document.

The pdf files have usually been created by my system, either simple scan or libre office writer. pdf files coming from outside my system usually cause no problems.

The attached document was printed by inkscape when qpdfview and adobe 9 both refused it. It is 6.7mb in size.

This inability to print a pdf is not very frequent and I usually find a way round somehow, but would like to know if it be hardware firmware or software related. I would like to resolve it before going to a better laser printer.

Attachments:

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   printer_status_HL-1110.jpg
   

[Member roland]

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pdf was too large, I attach a jpg which produced the pdf.

[Member ModdIt]

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Hi Roland, personaly I consider qpdfview to be like a trojan horse, waste of time, in the end the only really useful application I have found which is free
is an older version of master pdf editor.

With regard to printer I have had occasional problems with huge files on my B/W laser printer due lack of printer memory. Mine is an older Siemens labeled
Samsung model, been looking for ram for it, can find nothing at a fair price.

[Member roland]

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If I had looked first I would not have needed to post my question, apologies for that. I found the following post on Superuser about this printer which says it all.

The Brother HL-1110 is a GDI printer. That means that it does not render the page to be printed itself, but gets a bitmap for the entire page from the driver. Since a laser printer prints an entire page at once, it needs internal buffer space to store at lease one page. The HL-1110 has only 1MB of buffer which is just enough to store a full page (A4 or US letter) at 300 DPI. I’d assume that a compression technique is used to store higher resolution bitmaps as well (e.g. 600 DPI). If you have a page bitmap that cannot be compressed well this fails resulting in an “out of memory” error. – dasup Aug 26 ’15 at 16:29

As my pdf files are frequently over 1mb this explains why I cannot print them. Next time I buy a laser printer I’ll make sure it has much more memory and that it us expandable, or that it works in some way by streaming the bitmap between driver and printer to avoid memory limitations.

[Member ModdIt]

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Hi Roland, 300 DPI is generaly fine with a laser, you can in many cases
possibly get away with less. Brother states the one you have prints to 600*600
or higher with resolution control, whatever that is.

Many laser printers, especialy lower end models actualy convert higher resolution images
down to the standard 300*300 which slows printing and consumes memory.

You wrote: As my pdf files are frequently over 1mb this explains why I cannot print them,
the driver should be sending page for page and waiting for the printer to ask for next page.
Reading in the net it seems the driver is not exactly a revelation on either windoze or linux
as many people complaining of out of memory error. Sad as brother generaly makes good printers..

[Member toumbo]

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Did you tried using the driver Brother provides?

https://support.brother.com/g/b/productlist.aspx?c=eu_ot&lang=en&q=%20HL-1110

I have HL-L2350DW and I had a similar issue as you

• This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by toumbo.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by toumbo.

Intel Core2 CPU 6300 1.86GHz ‖ RAM 1930 MiB ‖ ASUS INC. P5B-VM
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[Member roland]

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I downloaded the driver from the official Brother support website, I am unaware of any alternative driver but will be happy to try one if available and compatible with 19.4 Manolis Glezos. I would upgrade the ram from the stated 1mb if I could find any and if the printer could put more ram to use.

I have Cups installed and Brother provide a different driver for this which I installed.

Another problem with cheap printers is the first cost / consumables ratio which on the HL-1110 is poor, first cost was 49 euros, new drum / toner unit for 2000 pages was 30 euros at Prink in Almeria, more than I was happy to pay. I have seen methods of refilling the toner but it looked haphazard and likely to fail in some way. I did however discover that pressing repeatedly the ‘on’ button 7 times opens a back door to more pages, and it will then print until the toner is exhausted.

I have 32gb ram on this pc and it seems ironic that my problem seems to be related to a shortage of ram!

[Member ModdIt]

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Hi Roland
you wrote: I would upgrade the ram from the stated 1mb if I could find any

Unfortunately the printer you have is non upgradeable.
Brother says for out of memory errors reduce document complexity and or resolution.

Good on you Brother support, how to ensure customers are not just dissatisfied with
the crappy Brother brand printer but the company reputation gets wrecked too.

[Member roland]

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Too right Moddit, I will soon be in the market for a replacement monochrome laser printer but it will not be a Brother. I still have a Panasonic KX4450i office printer but it needs a new drum and all my searches have failed to locate one. It is also parallel port connected which is inconvenient but maybe a suitable expansion card is available, or I could use an earlier PC as a printer server?

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