Smith Micro Forum FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions List for the FASTFAX utility FORMAT: Topic: QUESTION OR SUBJECT. ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS WITH THE SAME RESOLUTION Solution: ANSWER ADDITIONAL ANSWERS OR ALTERNATIVES _______________________________________________________________ Directions for using FASTFAX utility of QuickLink FastFax is a memory resident utility which captures HP LaserJet II (PCL 4) printer commands from within any application and faxes the resulting document. The Physical printer is not necessary, only the driver. Graphics will also transmit with Laserjet quality. To load FASTFAX: 1) At the C:\QL2FAX> prompt, type FASTFAX 2) Anwser Yes to load the TSR for sending and receiving faxes 3) You'll hear a tone followed by two lines of directions, one of which will allow you to unload FASTFAX (Alt =) and the other to activate FASTFAX (Alt \) Use /L# to specify a printer port (i.e. /L1 = LPT1) to activate FASTFAX with rather than pressing ALT \. To load FASTFAX with SNDFAX automatically, type: FASTFAX /F To load FASTFAX with SNDFAX/RECFAX automatically, type: FASTFAX /F /REC To load FASTFAX automatically when the computer boots, add the following into your AUTOEXEC.BAT with the desired load options: CD\QL2FAX call C:\QL2FAX\FASTFAX [/F] [/REC] CD\ To use FASTFAX: 1) Go into your DOS application and pull up the file you want to fax 2) Go into the printer setup of your application and select the HP LaserJet Series II printer driver 3) Now with the document on the screen, press the "ALT \" keys 4) Fill out the information and select OK, the screen will then disappear 5) Perform a print operation as you would normally do 6) You'll hear some beeps followed by the PCL conversion process, then messages will appear in the upper right hand corner of the screen displaying the status of the fax. To save your converted document to a QFX file instead of sending w/FASTFAX: 4A) Select the Save option and hit OK 5A) Type in a file name and hit OK 6A) Perform steps 5 and 6 like above, except it won't dial out. Instead the document will be converted and saved to the file name you gave in step 5A with a .QFX extension ready to be faxed from within Quick Link. To unload FASTFAX, press the "ALT =" keys To unload RECFAX/SNDFAX, at the C:\QL2FAX> prompt, type RECFAX /ALL *** It’s necessary to unload FASTFAX first before unloading RECFAX/SNDFAX for them to unload properly from memory *** The procedure is the same for all DOS applications. FASTFAX does not function in the Windows environment. Use QuickLink for Windows and the fax print driver. _______________________________________________________________ FastFax Issues: Topic: When I try to send a fax from my word processor, it converts the PCL file, but doesn’t dial Solution: Probably ran out of conventional memory to send the fax. Try using FastFax from a DOS prompt as a test. To do this, get to a prompt, press ALT \ and fill in the information. At the prompt, type: DIR > LPT1. If that works, there’s something happening in that application. You may need to boot clean or REM out some statements in the Autoexec.bat and/or Config.sys that could be causing some contention in memory or is taking up too much memory. As a workaround, you can Save to QFX file using FastFax and then send the fax directly from QuickLink. _______________________________________________________________ Topic: When I try to send a fax from my word processor, it gives me a PCL Convert Error ?? Solution: Generally any PCL convert error is caused by using something other than an HP LaserJet Series II print driver, such as an HP IIP. Some convert errors can be caused by the type of font that's being used, like scaleable fonts. Try creating a new document with a normal downloadable font as a test. Refer to the PCL Convert Error List below for more information. _______________________________________________________________ Topic: When I send a fax from my word processor, the document doesn’t look the way it does when I print it. Solution: If you normally use a dot matrix, you could be using a font that the HP printer driver doesn’t support. If the document has a lot of formatting and graphics, it may take longer for the PCL file to be fully created, in which case, when FastFax captures the PCL file to convert to fax, the fax file may miss part of the document. By default FastFax waits 10-15 seconds before capturing the PCL file. Try lengthening that by loading FastFax with: FASTFAX /T# where # is the number of seconds it waits to capture the PCL file. _______________________________________________________________ Topic: When I press ALT \, I get a black screen When I press ALT \, nothing happens Solution: Make sure FastFax is, in fact, loaded. Try pressing ALT \ from a DOS prompt and if that comes up, make sure you aren't running your application in a graphics mode. Multiple QLSETUP.DAT files can cause this as well. Check for and delete all occurrances of QLSETUP.DAT, run QuickLink, exit, load FastFax and try it again. _______________________________________________________________ The PCL Error Code List with Possible Solutions Error -1 is a Spawn error. The FastFax IV program was unable to find CDCPCL4.EXE. CDCPCL4.EXE is the FastFax IV PCL 4 converter, and it must be located in the FONTS subdirectory off of the QuickLink II Fax directory. This error could arise if the EXE file is corrupt, or if the any of the program files have been move or deleted from the FONTS subdirectory. This could also occur if the FONTS sudirectory has been renamed. As a last resort run a CheckDisk /Fix "CHKDSK /F" at the DOS prompt and reinstall the QuickLink II Fax program. Errors 1-3 are invalid printer command errors. The printer commands that are used in the document are not supported. This is usually caused when using a non HP LaserJet Series II printer driver. FastFax IV supports PCL 4 which is the native language of the HP LaserJet II printer. Make sure that you are not using a dot matrix or a PCL 5 printer driver. If you require a PCL 5 printer driver then you may consider upgrading to HotFax which supports PCL 5 and compatible printers. An example of a PCL 5 printer is the HP LaserJet III printer Errors 20-25 are Intellifont errors. This error is usually associated with using a non PCL 4 printer driver in your application. For example, if you were printing the document to an HP LaserJet III (PCL 5) printer driver. FastFax IV supports PCL 4, or the HP LaserJet Series II printer. When using FastFax IV it will be necessary to select a PCL 4 compatible printer in your application. If you require a PCL 5 printer driver then you may consider upgrading to HotFax which supports PCL 5 and compatible printers. An example of a PCL 5 printer is the HP LaserJet III printer Errors 30-39 are Soft Font errors. This may be caused when the printed document is saved using soft fonts incompatible with the FastFax IV PCL 4 converter. Make sure the printer driver in your application is an HP LaserJet Series II printer driver. In order for a soft font program such as More Fonts or BitStream Fonts to be compatible with FastFax IV the soft fonts must be downloadable to the printer at the time of the print job. For more information on this process please refer to your soft font program documentation. After checking your setup and if the error still occurs then you may want to try increasing the timeout for FastFax IV. Add the following parameter to the FastFax IV command line: "FASTFAX /T100". This will cause FastFax to wait 100 seconds after printing the document before it closes the capture file and begins the conversion. Errors 40-59 are read/write errors. This may be caused when the printed document is saved improperly to disk and it cannot be opened or read. If using FastFax IV to fax directly from an application then make sure you have ample disk space available. We recommend that you have a minimum of 500K of free hard disk space, if possible free up at least 1 meg of hard disk space. Errors 60-68 are memory/page swap errors. This may be caused by a conflict with a memory manager that is installed. Make sure you have ample disk space and memory available. Also, make sure before loading FastFax IV, that you have at least 500k of conventional memory available. You may also need to disable your memory manager while FastFax IV is running. You can do this by starting FastFax IV with the following command line parameter: "FASTFAX /E". The /E will cause FastFax IV to ignore the extended memory for page swapping and use the hard disk instead.