astradele

I have an aging Dell 1700 (not 1700n) laser printer, that I make network accessible via an equally geriatric SMB7004 ABR router (it has a parallel port for the printer and exposes network printer service).

Owing to a recent desktop upgrade, I found myself trying to remember how to get it work with Ubuntu and CUPS. I distinctly remember downloading the Dell Windows drivers and extracting the PPD file out to give to CUPS, with successful results.

Not this time.

Using the Dell drivers (1700 PS3) resulted in the printer flashing error briefly, then resetting; useless. I tired some of the generic drivers that come with CUPS (e.g. PCL5). They worked for 8.5×11 sheets, but would also print envelope sizes (which are supposed to manually fed) on those same 8.5×11 sheets. Nearly any reasonable driver seems to work for 8.5×11, but would also assume that size for other page sizes.

Eventually, I found a discussion thread about the Dell 1700 laser printer on Linux. It turns out that the driver I wanted was the generic PCL 6/PCL XL Printer Foomatic/pxlmono, which comes with CUPS. Finally! The irony of spending hours debugging a computer problem so that I could avoid handwriting an address on an envelope was not lost on me.