Printer driver help -- kind of hard to believe this ...

[dibl]

If I hadn't just now installed my Epson Stylus C84 on my Ubuntu 7.04 64-bit system, I would probably just consider it an abandoned model. But how the heck could it be available in the CUPS database for Ubuntu Feisty, and not for Kubuntu Feisty? I made a couple of stabs with "stylus-like" choices, but they don't show any signs of working. Unfortunately, my driver CD lists 2 OSs, but neither of them are Linux. Epson's driver web site likewise has Windows and Mac drivers, but nothing for Linux for this model.

Any ideas -- is there a CUPS site somewhere where one can get drivers, or do I need to go printer shopping?

Thanks!

[penguin.ch]

Re: Printer driver help -- kind of hard to believe this ...

Are CUPS, gutenprint et al. on both systems perfectly equal to each other? (Further reading)

[dibl]

Re: Printer driver help -- kind of hard to believe this ...

Well .... probably not, UR. It would appear that, in 32-bit Kubuntu, it needs to be a Gutenprint printer. I got this far in my research:

http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_dr...son-Stylus_C84

Following instructions, I used Adept to install the lsb package.

I downloaded the 32-bit Gutenprint driver, managed to convert the .rpm to a Debian-ready driver, and installed it. Then, with the KSystem printer utility, choosing to "add" my printer, I pointed the utility to /usr/shared/ppd/gutenprint/epson folder, where choices abound. There were 2 choices for Epson C84 -- I picked one (with a 50% chance of success). It appeared to install correctly, the installer reports success, but printing the test page produces an error message. I think next step is to try the alternate choice in the Epson folder ... I'm getting close ...

:P

[dibl]

Re: Printer driver help -- kind of hard to believe this ...

Success! 8) -- this is the file in /usr/var/share/ppd/gutenprint that I needed:

Epson-Stylus_C84-gutenprint.5.0.sim-en.ppd.gz

Not the other one.

So, this is a change from Edgy to Feisty -- my printer was available from the pre-installed list in the Edgy installation. Probably the live CD had to lose some files to get all of Feisty and its packages onto the image. That's just my guess, but obviously something drove my printer off the CD.

Thanks UR!

[ranxerox]

Re: Printer driver help -- kind of hard to believe this ...

I just installed my C84 and the magic cookie for me was:

marc@Laboratory:~/downloads$ sudo cups-genppd.5.0 -p /usr/share/ppd/custom/Epson escp2-c84
About to call stp_init
Called stp_init
. done.
marc@Laboratory:~/downloads$ ls /usr/share/ppd/custom
Epson
marc@Laboratory:~/downloads$ ls /usr/share/ppd/custom/Epson
stp-escp2-c84.5.0.ppd.gz

I went back into the printer settings tool and it rebuilt the database and crashed. I started it again and then I could fine the C84 choice during installation and all went well.

I find that I use it so rarely that I usually have to clean the heads before anything will print:

marc@Laboratory:~/downloads$ sudo cups-genppd.5.0 -p /usr/share/ppd/custom/Epson escp2-c84
About to call stp_init
Called stp_init
. done.
marc@Laboratory:~/downloads$ ls /usr/share/ppd/custom
Epson
marc@Laboratory:~/downloads$ ls /usr/share/ppd/custom/Epson
stp-escp2-c84.5.0.ppd.gz

[ranxerox]

Re: Printer driver help -- kind of hard to believe this ...

BTW, in last post, I didn't have to install anything. It was already there. Just, apparently, not unpacked into the driver directory.

And I was considering buying (yet another) printer tomorrow because it never seemed to work and the driver just wasn't there...

[Thulemanden]

Re: Printer driver help -- kind of hard to believe this ...

This exercise is like setting Linux more than 5 years back for a common printer model. Very Disappointing.

[eriefisher]

Re: Printer driver help -- kind of hard to believe this ...

the driver is in the 32-bit data-base, I just looked. Is the driver really different for 64-bit?? Does your driver package specify 64-bit?

Just curious.