HP LaserJet 4 PostScript - garbage when printing some maps

Archived from groups: comp.periphs.printers (More info?)

Hello all,

I have an HP LaserJet 4 with PostScript and 10megs of RAM, and like it
very much. I print to it mostly over ethernet from my Mac OS X G4, and
have recently started to print maps from Route 66 driving-directions
software.

Route 66 seems to have had some problems with printing on its initial
release, however I have downloaded the latest updates and now many
maps & directions-sheets print fine. I have, however, started
experiencing some glitches which seem to be consistent & reproducible,
and I wonder if they might be symptomatic of a shortage of RAM on my
printer.

The maps that I seem to be having problems with seem to be those which
are particularly detailed or complex, such as this one:
<http://mac.stroller.uk.eu.org/Route66/ShenleyLodge.pdf>.
It's not a particularly large file (441kb) but my guess is that all
the streets are stored as vector information, and that the PostScript
is getting overloaded when it tries it interpret them. Does this sound
feasible..?

The result I get when I try to print this map is a line of numbers
across the page, staggered across a handful of lines - a scan is at
<http://mac.stroller.uk.eu.org/Route66/output.gif>. Could this be
symptomatic of a printer out-of-memory issue..?

I get the same result if I print from Route 66 directly to the
printer, or if I use Mac OS's print-as-pdf function and then attempt
to print the map from Preview, except that the actual numbers seem to
be different.

This is a pain, because maps like this one are very useful to me, and
I'd like to print them out to give to a guy who has just started
delivering leaflets for my business. Like I say, many other maps seem
to print fine, it just seems to be those at this sort of scale, and
maybe (I can't remember for sure) some other particularly complex ones
at larger scales.

I appreciate all comments & advice,

Stroller.