Older Printers in Panther

lmstudiolmstudio
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
I'm hoping there's someone out there who can shed some light here because I've just been shut down by Apple tech support on this issue:



I have an Epson Stylus Photo EX with a parallel to USB adapter. I ran this confiuration with Gimp Print and Ghostscript in Jaguar with no problem. Since upgrading to Panther, printing is excrutiatingly slow--from 5 minutes to print a simple Fedex airbill to over an hour to print a 4x5 image from Photoshop (not even at the highest dpi). The response I got from Apple tech support was that since my printer is old enough not to be supported except through Gimp drivers, and since I use a parallel to USB adapter, they will not help me.



Basically, what they are saying is that I have to buy a new printer, when there's really nothing wrong with my "old" one!



Any genius out there with any insights?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    mmmpiemmmpie Posts: 628member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by lmstudio

    I'm hoping there's someone out there who can shed some light here because I've just been shut down by Apple tech support on this issue:



    I have an Epson Stylus Photo EX with a parallel to USB adapter. I ran this confiuration with Gimp Print and Ghostscript in Jaguar with no problem. Since upgrading to Panther, printing is excrutiatingly slow--from 5 minutes to print a simple Fedex airbill to over an hour to print a 4x5 image from Photoshop (not even at the highest dpi). The response I got from Apple tech support was that since my printer is old enough not to be supported except through Gimp drivers, and since I use a parallel to USB adapter, they will not help me.



    Basically, what they are saying is that I have to buy a new printer, when there's really nothing wrong with my "old" one!



    Any genius out there with any insights?





    Im dont know how good your printer is ( eg: is it a keeper ), but considering its got a parallel port Im guessing only so so. You can buy new printers for less than the price of replacement ink. Maybe you should look into that when you run out again ( although at those speeds it might be a while ).



    I cant help with the actual issues, except to suggest that you hook the printer up to a PC and share it over a network. If you dont have a PC then you could get an ethernet print server, Ive used a couple, one was a netgear, which worked really well for a small office ( 10 users ). It had a parallel port and an ethernet port, and supported a few different protocols.
  • Reply 2 of 3
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    I also have the Photo EX, but I have not used it yet with Panther. I use a Keyspan USB to Mac printer adapter. The panther upgrade CD's had a special printer package that installed older Epson printers. I know because I accidentally installed it instead of the package for my new Epson 2200. You may want to try and reinstall the printer package. I don't know if it is installed by default.
  • Reply 3 of 3
    lmstudiolmstudio Posts: 2member
    Despite the fact that this printer has a parallel port, it is a great printer--prints 11" wide and with 6 colors at 1440dpi. I got beautiful photo-quality prints from it before 10.3, but since the upgrade I've had to reboot in OS9 to get those kind of results. A newer comparable printer will cost me a few hundred dollars, which is not chump change for a small business.



    I am the sole designer in my home office, so there's no hooking up to a PC or network.



    And I checked once more to make sure that there is no OSX driver for this particular model?no go.
Sign In or Register to comment.