Printer gone wild!!

[gratefulgary]

I have an Epson Stylus Photo 870 connected to a MAC via USB and to a Dell via parallel printer cable. The printer used to work fine from both computers. It still works fine from the MAC. Recently, however, its gone wild from the PC. If I send it a document to print, it prints gobbledygook, i.e., Greek letters, dollar signs, letters, symbols, etc. covering the entire page. And won't stop unless I turn the printer off. Canceling the print job from the dialog box does nothing. I have deleted/added the printer several times without change. I have the most recent driver installed and there is no older driver available to roll back to. I have switched the connection and used the USB to connect to the PC and it works fine. Disconnecting the USB from the MAC has no effect. The MAC does not have a parallel printer port so I could not ascertain the integrity of the cable.

Short of correcting the fundamental problem, is there a device, some sort of splitter or switch, that I can connect to the printer via USB and then to each computer via USB so I can share the printer. I'd rather correct the problem.

Dell Dimension 2400, XP Home SP3, X86, Pentium 2.4, 1.5GB RAM
Mac power PC G4 dual gig, 1.5 GB RAM, OS X 10.5.5

[glc]

Replace the parallel cable. This is a common issue. That will be cheaper than a USB printer sharing switch.

[gratefulgary]

I'll give it a try. Didn't realize it was such a routine problem,

Thanks much.

[toomyg]

I had issues with programs running in the back ground for mine to do that Epson stylus C60 did the exact same thing but for the life of me I can't remember what program I was running to make it do that.

[gratefulgary]

I replaced the printer cable, same behavior. Here is a little more info.

I was mistaken about the driver information in the original post. I downloaded the latest driver from the Epson site again, v. 5.2as, and ran the set-up utility. It detected the printer and assigned it to the parallel port. I disconnected the USB cable to the Mac prior to doing so and all of what follows was as such. When I try to print a document I get the following error message in the Epson Status Monitor 3 window: "A communication error has occurred.
Check all cable connections and make sure all devices are on. If the device was turned off during printing, cancel the print job. If the error still does not clear, see the manual's troubleshooting section to cancel the error." And that's as far as I can get.

Next I added the printer from the Control Panel. The Add Printer Wizard does not detect a plug and play printer so I follow the steps to add manually. The wizard assigns a driver already installed on my hard drive from a list from which I select manufacturer and model, not the one recently downloaded and names the printer "Epson Stylus Photo ESC/P2." This is the printer/driver pair that resulted in the greek letters, etc. and still does. If I select the ESC/P2 in the control panel and then install the new driver for it I get the error message above.

Then I disconnected the parallel cable and connected the printer to the PC using the USB cable. New hardware was detected and the printer was assigned the old driver and named the printer ...ESC/P2(copy 2) and it works. Next I installed the new driver to that printer from the Control Panel using the Add Printer Driver Wizard using the "have disk" option and navigating to the INF file and selecting it (since I don't really have the disk) as described on the Epson site. And it works. The new driver BTY has a much richer feature set than the one already on my hard drive.

So tell me, PC gurus of technology, why can't I use the parallel cable and how can I fix the problem? Remember, it used to work.

[toomyg]

Well I'm still a NEWBIE here and I'm sure someone else has better advice but from what I read it should work and you say it did so that can only mean one thing to me and it is something on your computer has changed maybe an update or something, something that might go un-noticed like a driver of some kind. Has there been any changes on your system before this happened?

[gratefulgary]

Well of course there have been changes. It's a Dell running Windows XP, so by definition there have been hundreds of updates, not to mention all the software I've installed and their updates. I don't ordinarily use the Epson/PC combination. I usually use the Epson/Mac combination. So I don't know just when the problem began, only when the next time I went to use it since.

In the interest of full disclosure, there is also a Canon MP390 attached to the PC, which doesn't have any problems. And BTW, I currently live in Delaware Co., NY and lived 15 yrs in Allegheny Co. NY.

What if I attached the Epson with a cable that has parallel to printer and usb to PC?

[cork]

For what it's worth:

My printer gets those odd symbols and problems you were describing, when I would try to print certain documents and selected articles from websites. The only way I could get those documents to print properly was to decrease the DPI setting in the printer properties for that document. Don't know if that will help any, but it easy to try, and it won't hurt anything.

[glc]

You either have a defective parallel port on the computer or a defective parallel port on the printer. Time for a USB sharing switch.

[gratefulgary]

Well, all right then.

Thanks everyone for your help.

[toomyg]

Two user/screen names ?

[gratefulgary]

I don't know how that happened. I noticed that my number of posts didn't seem right as I scrolled down the series of posts, but didn't notice the two different names. It should be gratefulgary. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

BTW, instead of using the switch, I did some geeking around and discovered that the Mac has an application called Bonjour that enables sharing printers connected to the Mac by PC's on the network. I installed it and used the driver for the Epson/PC combination from the Control Panel and its a beautiful day in the neighborhood!!

[toomyg]

Glad to here its is working for you now if we can fix the problem with the prices of ink cartridges we would be all set

[glc]

Accounts merged.

[gratefulgary]

Thanks much for merging the acct's.

The ink is a racket.