When using PCounter you have a separate queue that will take the job from the client; this is then passed to the queue that relates to the printer identified by the swipe card box the user swiped their card through. I.e. you print to a holding queue, the job stays there until you swipe your card, at this point the swipe box tells PCounter which terminal ID you are using and PCounter just picks the job up and dumps it into the matching queue for the printer, and the printer then prints out the job as normal.
In this example we have an MFD printer device called “Management Information Services MFD (SMF)”, this is the queue for the MFD printer, you set this up like a normal printer using the “PCounter Port” instead of normal “TCP/IP Port” and input the IP address of the device and select the appropriate driver. You’ll find if you print direct to this queue (i.e. bypassing the card swipe boxes) all is well and the job will print as normal.
Next part is the two PCounter holding queues, these are named “Management Information Services Print Queue (SMF)” and “Management Information Services Print Queue (SMF) Output”, the first queue “Management Information Services Print Queue (SMF)” is configured as a PCounter port but set with a protocol as: “OtherPrinter” with an “Output Printer Name:” of “Management Information Services Print Queue (SMF) Output.” The second queue, “Management Information Services Print Queue (SMF) Output” needs to be set to use the port “LPT1:”
Now here is the crux of it, if you do not configure the “Management Information Services Print Queue (SMF)” i.e. the “pull queue” with the correct settings in PCounter you’ll get the error: ERROR: DATA AREA PASSED TO A SYSTEM CALL IS TOO SMALL ERROR MESSAGE
To fix this you must open the “PControl” tool, then browse to the name of the “pull queue” i.e. “Management Information Services Print Queue (SMF)” from here you then need to right click and select “PCounter->Configuration” then ensure that the settings are filled out on the “Settings”, “Prices” and “Rules” tabs shown:
So basically you add the prices to the “Prices” tab, on the “Settings” tab, (set “Pause all Jobs” to “Super Pause”, not mandatory) and most importantly under the “Rules” tab, you need to enable and configure the rules to: “If page count is greater than 1 pages, pause job” and “if page count is less than 10000 pages, pause job”, once this has been done, click OK to close the window.
Now you should be able to print to this “pull queue” without it corrupting the job and generating the error message: ERROR: DATA AREA PASSED TO A SYSTEM CALL IS TOO SMALL ERROR MESSAGE in the print queue when you’ve printed a job.
