[neon_duke]

I've had the fairly ubiquitous problem of my iMac refusing to talk to an Epson 740i printer. Originally it wouldn't even consider printing as an option at all. After tons of conflicting/inconclusive research on various forums, I can now report I've made... SOME... progress.

After not being able to get the iMac onto an ethernet network, in addition to the printing problems, I did a clean install of OS 9.2.1. Then, instead of using my old Epson CD, I used an installer file (NOT the updater) downloaded from Epson's website. This crashed once or twice until I restarted with all Appletalk extensions turned off. After that it seems to have installed normally.

Now, at least, I don't get the @$#%$*$ "Port in use..." stonewall anymore. It will let me select the SC740 in the chooser, though no port actually appears in the Chooser window. When printing or doing Page Setup in Word, the normal Epson Printer dialog comes up. It even appears to spool... but nothing comes out. The printer doesn't respond at all, and, bafflingly, the computer doesn't even know it. On the other machine I have set up, it whines constantly about the printer not being ready, etc. But this one sent the print job off into etherspace somewhere and just assumed it printed.

The Epson utilities also have no effect on the printer. The control screen launches, etc, but pushing the buttons for Status, Nozzle Check, etc. simply has no effect.

The ink cartridges are old physically but have not been used much. At any rate the printer doesn't think they're empty and won't let me change them.

Anybody have any thoughts? Can you help me get that last (but crucial) 10% of the way home? TIA!

[drcarl]

I have an Epson SC640 printer, don't know much about the 740.

I bought my 640 with my iMac 333 a few years ago. It never seemlessly worked with the iMac. Web pages were the worst. I found that selecting 'print preview' prior to printing seemed to allow printing to work in most cases.

Recently bought an iMac G4. Now I'm running OSX, which does not have any drivers for the 640. Found out about Gimp-PRINT (http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/MacOSX.php3) and that solved my problems.

Don't know what OS or hardware you are using, but if you have OSX, give it a try.

[vsurfer]

Originally posted by neon_duke:
When printing or doing Page Setup in Word, the normal Epson Printer dialog comes up. It even appears to spool... but nothing comes out. The printer doesn't respond at all, and, bafflingly, the computer doesn't even know it. On the other machine I have set up, it whines constantly about the printer not being ready, etc. But this one sent the print job off into etherspace somewhere and just assumed it printed.

Mine too -- won't print from Office X or Explorer 5.2.

but does print from Office 2001.


iMac DV G3 400

[meducus]

Not really the same thing but my experience may be useful.

I had heaps of trouble trying to get my Epson 760 to work when i first got my ibook. For some weird reason if i manually removed all the epson files from the 'extensions' folder (didn't delete them, just hid them in another folder - so I could put them back if i needed to) and then reinstalled the drivers it worked. I have no idea why but it worked.