HP LaserJet Pro P1102 stops responding after a while

[Jeff Tipton]

Hi,

I put HP LaserJet Pro P1102 on a CUPS server with Samba. I followed the 
steps as shown here:
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=21312

except I have 7.4-RELEASE, so I recompiled the kernel without ulpt 
device as suggested in foo2zjs site (INSTALL notes on FreeBSD 7), and 
the printer is now on ugen0.1.

After installation, the printer became available in CUPS, I could print 
a test page, then I exported CUPS and WINDOWS postscript drivers to 
Samba with cupsaddsmb.

Then I added the printer on some Windows XP workstations, and the shared 
driver installed automatically as expected.

The problem is that after some idle minutes, the printer stops 
responding. The job just disappears from the queue, but nothing prints. 
The same thing on the CUPS web interface. If I restart cupsd, the 
printer prints again. But as soon as try printing from another 
workstation, it's again silent. Really weird.

I found in the HP manual that it has an economic usage "feature" that by 
default is set to switch the printer off after 5 minutes being idle. The 
printer should switch on again when a new job is sent. This can be 
disabled but only with a native HP driver (don't really understand where 
it happens -- on the host the printer is attached to or within the 
printer's firmware). I tried to install the HP Windows driver on a 
workstation, attached the printer directly to it, disabled the switching 
off, sent a job from there as told in the manual but it didn't help. But 
maybe the 'economic usage feature' isn't the reason.

Any ideas of what could be wrong?