catgate Posted May 19, 2007 Report Share Posted May 19, 2007 I have a very quaint problem with our printer, an Epson Stylus Photo R200. It is about two years old. It first ran on W98SE with no problem. Last summer it got put onto Linux FC5 for most of the time with just occasional trips back to W98SE. Then about a week ago Linux FC5 was replaced by Ubuntu7 and it was quite happy about it all.Yesterday management had printed about three "documents" , direct from the screen, but when attempting yet another the silly machine refused. In the past when it has refused like this it has been because it had run out of one of the inks. (The ink level monitoring function has never worked on Linux and I usually pop it onto W98SE to check this). W98SE showed low very levels on two inks and only slightly better on the other four, so I put in a complete new set, and it worked happily. So back it came to Ubuntu, where it still refuses to work.No amount of stopping, starting, rebooting, etc. will encourage it to become more willing. It is shown as the default printer and is designated as "ready".Our last printer was a Canon which, we eventually found, had built into it a "con" chip, which stopped the machine from working, although nothing was wrong, and instructed the user to take it to a service agent.I would suspect this apart from the fact that it works fine on W98SE.On the top of the machine are three buttons the one on the right (green neon) is the on/off button. The one in the centre is the abort print button, and the one on the left is the ink button (red neon). This buttons neon will not go out.Any suggestions would be appreciated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-pops- Posted May 19, 2007 Report Share Posted May 19, 2007 Some people find this useful click here for getting over Epson printer problems - could be worth a look at. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan2273 Posted May 19, 2007 Report Share Posted May 19, 2007 Have you tried uninstalling it from Ubuntu then reinstalling it, as I do not use Ubuntu I cannot remember how you do this but the options will be in system services or control center. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catgate Posted May 19, 2007 Author Report Share Posted May 19, 2007 popsThanks for the link, pops. The contents of the site seem to indicate that there is every possibility of an embedded time bomb.In view of the fact that it still works on W98SE I am looking at this as only a very remote possibility at this stage. I wonder how many printer manufacturers are using this nasty trick?Alan2273Thanks Allan. I think I shall reinstall as you suggest, though how it can need reinstalling when it was working perfectly well only ten minutes before it refused the final hurdle I can not understand. But then there's an awful lot that falls into that category with me! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catgate Posted May 19, 2007 Author Report Share Posted May 19, 2007 Oh dear.... reinstalling has caused it to work. This is very worrying. It's a bit like painting by numbers, the end result, when viewed from afar, is acceptable (just), but the way of getting to that end result was far from satisfactory (to me)I am now left wondering what happened, how it happened and when will it happen again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-pops- Posted May 19, 2007 Report Share Posted May 19, 2007 The contents of the site seem to indicate that there is every possibility of an embedded time bomb.In view of the fact that it still works on W98SE I am looking at this as only a very remote possibility at this stage. I wonder how many printer manufacturers are using this nasty trick?Most - if not now they most likely will have soon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catgate Posted May 19, 2007 Author Report Share Posted May 19, 2007 The contents of the site seem to indicate that there is every possibility of an embedded time bomb.In view of the fact that it still works on W98SE I am looking at this as only a very remote possibility at this stage. I wonder how many printer manufacturers are using this nasty trick?Most - if not now they most likely will have soon.That really is despicable. Built in unreliability. The world seems to be one big ball of corruption. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan2273 Posted May 19, 2007 Report Share Posted May 19, 2007 I do not think it is built in unreliability, CUPS (Common Unix printer system) which provides foot-matic and Gimp-print drivers for the printers, has been known to throw a wobbly with my HP printer an several occasions.That is why I suggested uninstalling and reinstalling the printer as that always sorts it out for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catgate Posted May 19, 2007 Author Report Share Posted May 19, 2007 I do not think it is built in unreliability, CUPS (Common Unix printer system) which provides foot-matic and Gimp-print drivers for the printers, has been known to throw a wobbly with my HP printer an several occasions.That is why I suggested uninstalling and reinstalling the printer as that always sorts it out for me.The built in unreliability, to which I was alluding, is the built in time bomb that stop a printer functioning correctly at some time predetermined by the manufacturer.As far as CUPS is concerned I think it is has lessons to teach M$. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan2273 Posted May 19, 2007 Report Share Posted May 19, 2007 Catgate if you really want some fun, try getting an old scanner to work in SANE. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catgate Posted May 19, 2007 Author Report Share Posted May 19, 2007 Catgate if you really want some fun, try getting an old scanner to work in SANE.I've just had some fun getting a relatively new Epson 1250 to work in Sane. In fact I was almost driven in sane. It turned out that the default setting for the lamp warm up time was -1. Unsurprisingly the scanner seemed to be unfamiliar with negative time and so it just sat there. An adjustment to 4 seemed to do the trick. I was left wondering about the relationship between time and space and Einstein, and if there was actually any negative space. And if there was how much per kilo was it worth? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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