Or it could possibly be that the link (parallel port, or communications network) between the sending regime and the device is 'garbling' some of the stream.
This happens more with PCLXL (PCL6) than with PCL5 because the former is primarily a binary protocol (so is more prone to substitutions/inserts, like changing LineFeed to CarriageReturn LineFeed). With PCL5, such tampering is more likely to cause corrupt raster images, but pages will still print; with PCLXL, the interpeter 'polices' the protocol much more strictly.
Having said that, the stream header itself uses ASCII text, so comms problems are more likely to affect the body, not the header.