Printing to Public Printers

The Martinos Center has several general use black/white and color printers at key locations in the center. These are:

  • admin - b/w printer in CNY149 2301 (by Dr. Rosen's office)
  • admincolor - color printer in CNY149 2330 (by Carol and Karen)
       The color printer by the copier is not for general use
  • cyclades - b/w printer in CNY149 2330 (by Carol and Karen)
  • sc - b/w printer in South Central
  • sccolor - color printer in South Central
  • deca - b/w printer in CNY149 2248 (Fischl area)
  • decacolor - color printer in CNY149 2248 (Fischl area)
  • b36 - b/w printer in CNY75 2nd floor (formerly in CNY36)
  • b36c - color printer in CNY75 2nd floor (formerly in CNY36)
  • b120 - b/w printer in CNY75 2nd floor
  • b120c - color printer in CNY75 2nd floor

Many groups have their own printers. Contact established members of these groups for those printer names.

In Linux, printing of Postscript or Text files can be done from the command line using the lpr command:

lpr -P printername file.ps

For more information on printing options, check out the CUPS Printing and Options page.

To check on jobs on a printer, use the lpq command:

lpq -P printername

You should see a job number for each print job which can be used with the lprm command to cancel it:

lprm -P printername jobnumber

Many GUI applications in Linux will print in a Windows-like way but you will need to specify the printer. After printed though, you will need to use the lpq command to check on the job and lprm to cancel. Some GUI applications give you no way to select a printer. These will use the setting of the PRINTER and/or LPDEST environment variables instead. To set these, edit your ~/.cshrc file.

OpenOffice does completely its own thing with printers. To set the default printer run the spadmin program. This program seems flaky though and sometimes you have to hand edit the config file ~/.rhopenoffice1.1/user/psprint/psprint.conf.

For Windows, you can setup printing to the above printers by going to the Printers & Faxes control panel and choosing Add New Printer. Select to add a Network Printer. Do not browse for the printers above as you will not find them. Instead, in the field to enter an explict printer name, use a name of the form

\\printsrv\printername

Some Windows boxes have problems printing through the printsrv print server. In these cases use Direct TCP/IP printing. For step 12, if you don't find the driver, click Have Disk and then in the file dialog that comes up navigate to \\surfer\extras\printing where we have in directories drivers for the printers types above.

For Macintosh OSX computers, you can usually find the printers above through Appletalk, but not always. It will be more consistent to set up "LPD/LPR" printing to the printers.

On Jaguar and before:

  1. Open the Print Center utility (located in /Applications/Utilities/).
  2. While holding down the Option key, click on the "Add" button in the Print Center toolbar. A new dialog will open.
  3. In the dialog click on the top popup menu and select "LPR/LPD Printing". On some old versions of OSX, you choose "IP Printing" at the top and then "LPD/LPR" for printer type.
  4. For the printer address use "printsrv.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu"
  5. For the queue use the name of the printer. Uncheck the "Use default queue" box if you see it.
  6. In newer OSX versions, it asks for Device name and Device URI. Give the name of the printer for Device Name. For the URI, give it something with the format

    lpd://printsrv.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/printername-raw

    For example: lpd://printsrv.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/sccolor-raw

  7. Next, click on the "Printer Model" popup menu and select the manufacturer for your printer (e.g. HP), and and then find the right model of the printer.

On Tiger:

  1. Open the Printer Setup Utility (located in /Applications/Utilities/).
  2. Click the "Add" button in the toolbar.
  3. Select "IP Printer" in the dialog toolbar.
  4. For Protocol, choose "LPD (Line Printer Daemon)".
  5. For Addresss, enter "printsrv.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu".
  6. For Queue, enter the Unix printer name followed by "-raw" (e.g. sccolor-raw)
  7. For Name, enter the Unix printer name
  8. For Print Using, you can use "Apple LaserWriter II NT" for use with our HP LaserJet printers. For other printers, you may have to select the specific driver which you may have to download from the vendor. The "Generic Postscript" will work with any of the 4000 series HPs.

If you have printing problems using the above, try using Direct TCP/IP printing.

Printing in Duplex -- Both Sides of the Paper

Some printers, such as admincolor, may have duplexers which allow the printer to print both sides of a sheet of paper. (Most printers do not.)

Assuming you are on Linux and have a Postscript file ready to send to lp (if you are using a program, get it to generate the Postscript file rather than trying to print from your application), use a command like this:

lp -d admincolor -o sides=two-sided-long-edge filename.ps

Then CUPS, the printing system, will try to modify the Postscript file on the fly to add the duplex option. Sometimes this will work; sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes it makes the file print nothing or junk. But you can try it. (Documentation on this can be found at http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/options.html)

Windows has a universal print driver for all applications, so use the Properties setting for the printer in question.

Printing a Poster

The Martinos Center has an HP DesignJet 500PS plotter that can be used to print posters for scientific conferences and presentations. Only Martinos Center account holders can use this printer. If you do not have an account, you must get permission from Dee Dee Correia before printing.

The printer is in room 1108 in Building 149 (the cold room). One of the Martinos Center sysadmins (Chris/David/Sam/Paul) must be present in order for you to print your poster.

Posters can be created in Adobe PDF or PPT (PowerPoint) format. You should do all formatting and editing before you bring your poster to be printed. Please make sure the document dimensions match the final dimensions you would like to print. Increasing the scale often results in distortion or pixelation of images, so we strongly discourage this. The computer used to print posters is running Windows XP with Microsoft Office 2003 software. We sometimes run into compatibility problems with people who authored their posters using Macs. For that reason we recommend using a Windows platform to create your poster.

Colors are occasionally not true to what you may see on the screen. Notably, deep blues tend to come out more purple. If you have any concerns about color feel free to create a small "test strip" with the colors you want to use, and we will print that for you to keep handy.

The paper is a 42"-wide heavy-duty, non-glossy spool. So your poster should be no larger than 40" in one axis (i.e. tell your program the paper is 42" along that axis but make sure you have one inch margins).

You can bring your poster on a CD or on a USB drive, or you can put it up someplace where we can copy it over the network to the printing computer. This can be in your usual NMR home directory or elsewhere on our UNIX filesystems.

Posters are printed on a first-come, first-serve, as-available protocol. We do not make appointments for poster printing. when your poster is ready to be printed and if the printer is free at that time, we will print it for you.

We require one of the poster authors to be present during the printing. This is so you can watch the poster as it's being printed to double check for errors (formatting, or typos for example). Poster paper and ink are expensive, so we try to avoid reprints. Reprints are also an inconvenience of there is a line of people waiting to print. A 42" by 56" poster takes an average of 20 minutes to print. The printer is kept in a well air-conditioned room so consider bringing a jacket.

If we are somehow unable to accommodate your schedule, you can also contact Radiology Educational Media Services (REMS). They will print your poster for you at no charge. REMS number is 6-8335 or email . You should first check with them to see what their requirements are for poster dimensions and any other possible restrictions.

Another alternative poster-printing service is the MGH Photography Department. They have a 44" printer and charge $10/square foot with same-day turnaround. Phone 617 726 2237, email mghphoto@partners.org.

Note:
Please make sure your poster includes the proper logos and acknowledgements. See http://www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/martinos/userInfo/operations/miscOps.php for more details.

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Copyright 2005, Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging