[tex-k] Problem with dvips

[Richard N Schmidt]

Dear TeX: For over a month my colleague and I have been
having trouble with dvips. No one here at UB has been
able to help.
    We use the University's Sun system. 
Here is the problem:  Assume that the souce file
is test.tex, which is a latex source file.

/util/TeX/bin/latex test.tex             produces a dvi file OK.
/util/TeX/bin/dvips -o test.ps test.dvi  usually does not produce
                                         a ps file but send a stream
                                         of characters to the screen.
Sometimes, a ps file is produced, as it should.

When we use the older version:
/util/TeX3.14/bin/latex test.tex   and
/util/TeX3.14/bin/dvips test.dvi   we always get a ps file as we should.

     We now want to process a book written in latex. We have been told
to use the TeX3.14 version.  However, the other is the latest version
and we thought that we should use it. But, we can not be sure that
it will work. 
    Could you help us in this problem? Many thanks.
          R. N. Schmidt, professor emeritus