Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

supernovamac · Feb 14, 2004, 06:38 AM

I have a HP DeskJet 970 Cxi. And I installed the latest driver. But I can not print. I get an error message and my black ink is supposed to be empty, but when i go to the toolbox and try to find out the level of ink it can not get an connection with the printer. And therefore i can not print. What shall i do?

Detrius · Feb 14, 2004, 10:26 AM

Unplug the USB and plug it back up. Turn the printer off and turn it on again. Make sure that it shows up in the Apple System Profiler. If not, it's time to get a new printer.

supernovamac · Feb 14, 2004, 10:50 AM

It worked under macos 10.2.

ryju · Feb 14, 2004, 11:14 AM

Originally posted by supernovamac:
It worked under macos 10.2.

Have you opened Printer Utility and added it as a USB printer?

bergy · Feb 15, 2004, 05:38 PM

Several other users have reported that after they updated to Panther from Jaguar that they could no longer print to their printer. Hewlett-Packard printers seem to have been especially hit by this problem. Several solutions have been proposed. It may be necessary to use them together to fix your printing problem.

1. Delete the setup for your printer and then reinstall your printer's drivers. Delete the printer from Printer Setup Utility. Restart. Add your printer.
2. Delete the drivers that come with Mac OS X 10.3 and install the drivers available on the Web site of the printer's manufacturer.
3. Delete all of the "com.apple.Print.(...).plist" files from your ~/Library/Preferences folder.

supernovamac · Feb 16, 2004, 05:26 PM

I have tried ewerything i can think of. And the things posted. The only thing i can think of now is to by a new printer and get one that will work. whith mac os 10.3.

bergy · Feb 16, 2004, 10:00 PM

Originally posted by supernovamac:
I have tried ewerything i can think of. And the things posted. The only thing i can think of now is to by a new printer and get one that will work. whith mac os 10.3.

If you're going to get a new printer, I can Highly recommend the canon i850 which I own.
Quick, smooth, quiet, and looks cool!

supernovamac · Feb 17, 2004, 11:21 AM

Thank you. I will look in to it. But i think i will by a laserwriter. And i think it will be a brother printer. But i will see... :-)

Simon · Feb 17, 2004, 11:24 AM

Originally posted by supernovamac:
But i think i will by a laserwriter. And i think it will be a brother printer.

If it's going to be a laser printer I think you should take a look at HP.

I hate the company and I hate their inkjets, but when it comes to laser printers I think they're (almost) the only way to go.

supernovamac · Feb 18, 2004, 02:56 PM

But if i by hp laserprinter i might get into the same problems than my hp inkjet printer. And then i am just as far as i was. But i will look into it and se what i will do. First i will run a new installment of panther whith formating the hardisk and se if that helps.

Simon · Feb 18, 2004, 04:36 PM

Originally posted by supernovamac:
But if i by hp laserprinter i might get into the same problems than my hp inkjet printer.

Could be, but I doubt it.

The laser jets use a different driver than the ink jets.

As I said, HP is a sucker company, but I'm having trouble finding any other laser printer that can compete price-performance wise.

tooki · Feb 19, 2004, 01:21 PM

You wouldn't run into the problem with any PostScript laser printer, be it HP or anyone else.

HP makes good laser printers, but you should also consider Xerox.

And consider a used one. You can get a used HP LaserJet or Apple LaserWriter for cheap, and they last forever, and parts for most of them are readily available.

Whatever you get, though, make sure it does PostScript Level 2 or PostScript 3: PostScript Level 1 won't work in OS X (this excludes buying a lot of older laser printers).

tooki

supernovamac · Feb 20, 2004, 05:54 PM

I have looked at some hp laserprinters and they are really ok. So i might by one next week. They are not so expensive :-)

Maybe when macos 10.3.3 coms my inkjet printer will work again :-)

supernovamac · Feb 21, 2004, 08:21 AM

I have reinstalled macosX 10.3. And tried to get my hp deskjet to work. That did not happen. So i bougt a new brother HL-5040. And it prints whith no problem. So the upgrade to macos 10.3 has cost me the price of the system and the price of a new laserprinter. If i had known this i would have wated for when i by a G5.

So if you upgrade lookout. But i love macos 10.3, it is faster even on my ibook.

Thank you all for your help. :-)

dlavi · Mar 3, 2004, 04:53 PM

I have consistently had various problems with HP printer drivers under 10.2 and 10.3. The solution that worked for me was installing Gimp Print

Macpilot · Mar 4, 2004, 11:03 PM

I have had problems with my printers with every version of OS X. Panther does not seem to be any better than Jaguar. I am continually having issues with my Epson laser and HP inkjet printers. All the tweaking, unplugging, re-installing, restarting, zapping, trashing, etc, has not worked.

I would say this is the area Apple should focus on with 10.3.3. Or maybe Apple should start building printers again to guarantee they work with their OS. I never had problems with my first and only Apple printer and OS 7, 8, and 9.

ChillieMac · Mar 5, 2004, 02:03 AM

I agree with the post above. I bought an HP PSC all in one printer when Mac OS X.1 shipped...it worked ok then, no prob. But ever since then with each major dot release, Jagwire and Panther refused to work with either the Apple supplied driver or the "latest" driver from HP. The BIG problem is:
1) Apple changing their printing architecture a lot each major release which makes it necessary for hardware vendors to update their drivers....

2) Hardware vendors are slow to or flat out against updating drivers for oldr hardware (even if it's only been a year or two...they won't put any resources into supporting previous customers...they would rather sell new printers every time you upgrade your OS.

3) Does anyone want to be locked into a particular OS version, just so their peripherals will work? Does anyone have inkjets that have been supported from 10.1 through 10.3.2?

Apple needs to either;

A) Stop updating their printing architecture so often....unless

B) Hardware developers/vendors officially contract to update drivers for 3 or more years from initial release

or

C) Apple needs to develope an extremely easy Driver Builder kit to go with XCode so even a monkey can update printer drivers.

Peripheral support...for more than a year...is key to full OS X adoption and more importantly satisfaction.