How do I configure the IP address of an IBM 4247-003 printer?

Question

Apparently this is really hard. The printer was bought to replace a twinax-connected printer, but the installer was struggling with two issues:

1. How do you set the IP address, netmask and gateway for the IBM 4247-003 printer? Or how do you set it to DHCP?
2. How do you print out the network configuration on a test page?

Is this straight forward, assuming you know what you are doing, or are there some gotchas? Is there any way to test if the networking components are faulty?

C'mon greybeard AS400 printer gurus, I'm grateful for any tips to pass on.

Solution 1

From some research I did, it looks like the 4247 printer does not have native Ethernet support. Instead, it uses an external print server device. Most likely, this is the IBM Network Print Server for Ethernet Networks. It's a small box attached to the parallel port on the printer and it comes with its own power adapter. You didn't mention this, so I'm only guessing here. Here is a link to the adminstrator's guide for that print server: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/printers/manuals/nps/s2460111.pdf

To see the current configuration, press the TEST button until the STATUS indicator starts to flash, release the button, and press it once. This will print the config file contents. INT_ADDR will have the IP address. To change it, ftp to the device. The ftp user id is root and the default password is pass. The config printout may give a different root password.

The manual also mentions that you can use the arp command to set the IP address for the printer like this: arp -s xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx yy-yy-yy-yy-yy-yy where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP address you want your printer to have and yy-yy-yy-yy-yy-yy is the physical address on the print server. The physical address on the print server is the print server id found on the back of the device, but should also show in the config printout. If different, use the one from the config printout since it may have been changed by a previous owner. I'm not an IP guru enough to have used the arp command like this, so a grain of salt is advised.

Solution 2

The 4247-003 model seems to be the first 4247 with the option of built-in ethernet support, (previous versions could use an external print server connected via the parallel port and requiring its own power supply).

This built-in print server has its MAC address printed on a label on the unit, howvever according to an IBM manual it is possible to change the hardware ID via a menu on the console. The control panel on this printer doesn't have any network configuration menu that I could find, nor could I print out a network configuration page.

Connecting via a crossover cable and capturing the traffic with Wireshark, the observed hardware address was not the same as that on the label. DHCP requests were issued but the printer never replied on the offered address. On the control panel, press

Menu > Power On Reset

This reset the MAC address to the value on the label, as well as changing the IP configuration to a previous (static) configuration. It was now possible to connect to that address over the cable and configure the Axis print server.

Solution 3

It looks like you need the IBM InfoPrint Remote Printer Management Utility.

The following features are available in this release:

• Device Discovery
• Printer Organization
• Printer Status Report
• Printer Configuration
• Firmware Updating
• Remote Operator Panel Management

EDIT: Just noticed th AS400 tag. RPMU is for Windows, so this may not help.

Comments

[Kara Marfia]

+1 for creating the AS400 tag. ;)

[nray]

Thanks - I'm going to try this (from Windows). Yes, we need to print from the AS400, but there's no reason why I can't check the config etc from Windows. I'll read the friendly manual first, but this might be the answer.

[nray]

The built-in print server does have a test button above the ethernet connector - thanks for the tip, I'll have to see if it will spit out it's configuration page that way.