I recently purchased a HP 450c from a local surveyor. I am wanting to use it with my laptop (running windows 8). I found a USB to parallel cable and hooked everything up. I finally was able to find a driver to make it work. It then gave me an error code. I lubricated the carriage shaft and that took the error message away. Printed a test page. That worked ok. Started to plot a drawing and it won't rotate my drawing to landscape and it didn't plot any color at all.
Any help I can get to rotate my size Arch D drawing to landscape and get the color to plot would be much appreciated!
Thank you
Matt
What drivers did you find & install? I have one of mine running on Windows 7 using WinLine Drivers. All the page orientation settings are set in the driver setup screen. Also, for the color to print, did you do the plotter color cartridge setup and turn on the plot in color function and run the mark up sheet back through?
The last drivers hp produced for this model is pl532en.exe. Actually, that is the driver for about 20 older plotters. Is that the one you installed?
I'm running a 450c in Win7-32 over a network with no problems. I've installed the same drivers in Win7-64 but haven't tested it.
The Winline driver is a 3rd-party offering. As I recall, it sells for about $200. I demo'd it when I switched to Win64 and discovered that the only HP driver available doesn't support color under Win64. The Winline seemed to work fine, but I balked at paying two hundred bucks for something I'd always gotten free in the past. Instead, I bought a used HP print server (XL170 or something like that) for about $20 on eBay, and that solved the problem.
I haven't had the privilege of printing from Windows 8 in my lifetime yet. Also, not sure if it is autocad you are printing from, or if you have already created express page setup(s) or not for your drawings.
Page orientation;
If you are just printing directly via the HP450c print window, just as you would print from to a standard desktop printer from adobe or excel, select printing preferences (or properties), then navigate further into custom properties, make sure you specify your roll size (I am assuming you have a 24" roll) in the Paper Size tab. Next, select the Advanced tab and make sure the Autorotate check box is selected under the Save Paper section.
Printing Color;
Make sure you have defined your plot style table (pen assignments) *.ctb file if it is autocad. Also make sure in the print window that "Plot with plot styles" check box is selected.
You might have already done these, but it never hurts to check. It is like the old saying when something doesn't work, the first question always to ask "Well, did you plug it in?"
Hopefully this helps.
