Erratic Epson

[Gregg]

Noises in the night. Turned out to be my Epson 740 slowly churning out gibberish; 6 1/2 pages before I stopped it by shutting it off. And the computer had been shut down. (Bad grammar, perfect computerieze.) Last thing printed was a letter done in Claris Works.

The first page starts out with about 8 lines of nothing but "wwwwwwwwww..." Then this:
"W?}U=wwku=wowwww;W++=w7o}k=}} ..." and so on for more than a full line. Then it just printed more wwww a few {s and _s. I don't have time to look for a pattern, just looks sort of like this"
"www_ww_wwww_ww{w_ww_www_w{w..." By the end, it was doing fewer {s, but never any but those three characters after the "equation" at the beginning.

What's up with that? I haven't turned it back on yet. Maybe it will just turn itself on. One thing's for sure, I won't leave paper in it for awhile. I should also remember to turn it off after using it!

[kelly]

Got a Router?

http://www.linuxprinting.org/macosx-faq.html#q_1_6

[Gregg]

Nope. That was interesting though. I hope this doesn't start happening to every print job. Loved the use of "concatenate" there. Auto gives a "concatenating" error message. I think they're just trying to intimidate the user.

[jepinto]

Lights dim last night?  just before strange noises and beasties that go bump in the night?

Turn off was the right thing.  Sounds like a self test, which I've gotten once or twice when trying to abort a print job, and being in a hurry, and pushing too many buttons at once.....you know, trying to save the color ink

Makes one think that a power "brown" might not have  scrambled it's test.....

Or I've totally lost it and the beasties are bumping in my night.  

[Gregg]

Hmm. I wasn't pushing any buttons, honest! It printed the last page with some streaks across it though. Maybe I need to clean the print head. But, the gibberish prints were crisp and clean...

[pendragon]

Gregg, This may be worthwhile--

1. Turn the printer off
2. Unplug the printer (really)
3. Shut down the computer
4. Wait 15 minutes
5. Plug in the printer
6. Start up the computer
7. Turn on the printer and test

If the problem persists:
1. Find Epson Printer Utility and double click on the icon. It is in: Computer/Library/Printers/EPSON/Utilities/Epson Printer Utility
2. In the next window, double click on “SC 740”
3. In the next window, on the third button, double click on “Head Cleaning” and follow the screen prompts until all head cleaning tasks have been completed.

I am hoping these procedures will “reset” your printer and everything in the queue. None of this should make matters worse and is, IMNHO, worth trying.

Harv

[Mayo]

Gregg, in case you didn't read my last post under my topic...

Zapping the PRAM and rebuilding the desktop seemed to do the trick for my problem.  This was done after leaving both the Mac and printer turned off all night.

Maybe they were just tired...

 

[Bill]

"1. Find Epson Printer Utility and double click on the icon. It is in: Computer/Library/Printers/EPSON/Utilities/Epson Printer Utility"

Been wondering where to find that. Thanks! <gr>

[Gregg]

Thanks Harv. I printed your reply (at the office) and will give those steps a try at home when I find the time. I printed something at home last night with no trouble. I only put in one sheet of paper, and don't remember if I turned off the printer.