The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Question about printers

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by Aniki, Sep 1, 2008.

  1. Aniki

    Aniki Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    22
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Hi I have a epson cx 8400 and it worked fine when I was using it with my vista laptop. But, now I switched to macbook pro and for the life of me I can't seem to get it working I've gone to the epson website downloaded all the necessary drives and such, however it still won't print. When I try and print it will either: keep running through papers and not print or suddenly start printing and won't stop printing with random letters and number.
    So I've come here to see if anyone can help me with my predicament, because I'm getting to the point of going out and buying a new printer that will actually work and not deal with all of this hassle. (If anyone know of a decent printer that is comptable with macs any suggestion will be taken into consideration)
    (Sorry If I posted this in the wrong section of the forms, not sure if this is an OSX related issue or not, plus I'm very new to macs )
    I would appreciate any help, if possible
    - Aniki
     
    Aniki, Sep 1, 2008
    #1
  2. nizzy1115

    nizzy1115 Notebook Prophet

    Reputations:
    2,557
    Messages:
    6,682
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    205
    If it worked fine in vista then im sure the printer is fine. It sounds like another bug in the apple.
     
    nizzy1115, Sep 1, 2008
    #2
  3. r0k

    r0k Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    104
    Messages:
    406
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    OS X ships with 3 gig of print drivers. These cover a lot of printers, but not all. I went to Epson's web site and found a link with help making their printers work with OS X. If the printer is spitting out jibberish, it implies you are using the wrong driver. When you install the printer, don't let it pick "auto". Forcibly pick the printer from the list.

    Many newer printers are "win-printers" that save cost by having the driver do all the page rendering work on the pc or mac. What is sent across to the printer (by usb or ethernet) is proprietary jibberish.

    This means they don't have to support a "language" like "PCL" or "Postscript". This means the driver is doing a lot of work and having the wrong driver is a big deal. I only have one "win-printer" still hanging around. It's an HP. It works fine with OS X but all the rendering is done on the Mac. If it ever breaks, I will get a printer that has true printer language support. The other printers I use are Brother printers and they support PCL language. For this reason, they are less vulnerable to trivial driver issues.
     
    r0k, Sep 1, 2008
    #3
  4. Budding

    Budding Notebook Virtuoso

    Reputations:
    1,686
    Messages:
    3,982
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    105
    Budding, Sep 2, 2008
    #4
  5. gms238

    gms238 Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    8
    Messages:
    133
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Did you un-install the driver and then re-install it?
    I had some problem with the Epson printers when i upgraded to Leopard. I had a C88+ that worked fine under Tiger but totally messed things up when I upgraded. I went to Epson's website, downloaded the drivers again, dumped the installed driver, re-installed the driver, and everything worked fine.
    Sometimes thing can get corrupted (it just happens) and a re-install fixes it all.
     
    gms238, Sep 2, 2008
    #5