Driver Packages for Some Epson Printers

Problems and successes with specific brands/models of printers
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rcrsn51
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#61 Post by rcrsn51 »

Mike Walsh wrote:Fortunately, in my case, 'eppi' works just as well for the scanner data/driver packages as it does for the printer.
Are you sure about this? IIRC, Lighthouse is based on Fatdog, which uses /usr/lib64. But the Epson scanner packages want to install into /usr/lib/sane, so the scanner app would fail. Have a look in your Lighthouse filesystem to see where eppi put the driver files. You are looking for files named "epkowa".

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Mike Walsh
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#62 Post by Mike Walsh »

Hi, Bill.

Just to let you know; I had a quick shufti through the LH64 filesytem.....and the 'epokwa' files are exactly where you'd expect them to be.....in /usr/lib/sane, because in Lighthouse64, /usr/lib is just a symbolic link into /usr/lib64.

The same identical files show in /usr/lib/sane as they do in /usr/lib64/sane.

Does that clarify matters at all? :lol:


Mike. :wink:

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rcrsn51
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#63 Post by rcrsn51 »

Thanks. In Tahrpup64, the link goes the other way from /usr/lib64 to /usr/lib, and in Fatdog700 the /usr/lib link has been dropped.

starhawk
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#64 Post by starhawk »

Just got an early birthday present (actual Big Day is June 20) -- an Epson WF-7620 printer/scanner/copier/probablyfax/kitchensink/pizzaoven. I'm over the moon with this thing -- especially because the drivers installed super smoothly! Took the standard ESC/P-R driver, and the EPKOWA scanner driver.

rcrsn51, thank you tremendously for supplying us Puppians with the ability to print and scan easily :) it's remarkable how something seemingly so simple can really be quite complex -- and appreciated, despite how often we take the ability to produce a hardcopy or digitization of a document for granted...

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Mike Walsh
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#65 Post by Mike Walsh »

Hey, starhawk.

That's a nice birthday prezzie! It looks as though it really has got everything, including the Out house sink...

My trusty old SX218:-

https://www.epson.co.uk/products/printe ... 18#details

...was a baby brother of (& immediate forerunner to) the business-class WorkForce series. Probably explains why it uses the WorkForce-series drivers. Of course, like all Epsons, the ink is the killer, cost-wise. WH Smiths, here in the UK, are asking nearly £50 for a set of four inks (red, yellow, black & blue)...!! For some time (till recently), I've been getting them from our small local computer guy; £15 for a set of four. Until a little bird whispered in my ear that even at that, he was enjoying a nearly 300% markup...

Now I get them from here:-

http://www.prink.co.uk/epson-stylus-sx2 ... ridges.php

Four of each (16 in total) for a fraction more than I've been paying for one of each.....and the quality is equivalent (if not superior) to the Epson originals. How the hell WH Smiths are managing to get away with nearly 1300% markup is beyond me...! :roll:

C'est la vie, unfortunately...

(And you're right about the drivers; AFAIK, Epsons really are one of the easiest printers to install in Puppy. One word; make sure with the scanner driver that you install the 'data' package first.....'cos without that, the scanner driver will NOT install, as it needs stuff contained in the 'data' package.

But I guess you've found that out already... :lol: )


Mike. :wink:

starhawk
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#66 Post by starhawk »

*shrug* I just installed the EPKOWA *.pet and unplugged/replugged the USB cable. PeasyScan found it right away.

I confess I have no idea how much it was (I didn't ask and they didn't offer) -- but I *can* tell you this...

My mother, some years ago, bought a Canon i9900 11x17 (IIRC it actually goes up to 13x18 or something weird like that, if you want) printer -- not a scanner, copier, fax machine, or partridge-in-a-pear-tree, JUST a printer. She bought it at Staples, an office supply chain store, and she bought it on clearance.

$500. We had money back then...

The machine still works 100% okay (I just bought cartridges for it not two weeks ago!) with the sole exception of the button that brings it back online after an error (or cancels the printing if you press it twice, ugh!) -- that button is a little 'wonky' and you kind of have to hunt around with the big silver plastic lump in front of the switch to find the right spot to trigger the blasted thing.

BUT the switch behind it, I can tell from sound and feel, is a "tactile button" type switch, or "tact switch" in common electronics nerd parlance. That is to say, one of these little bastards right here. I hate those things. They are *so* incredibly cheap and nasty that it makes me almost literally cringe to see them. Anything with tact switches is automatically a bodge job, in my book.

The GOOD news about those horrible nasty little lumps of I-can't-find-enough-corners-to-cut-here is that they come out quite easily. Four little solder joints and into the rubbish bin it goes (which is exactly where they all belong!). There are even two-contact versions and surface-mount models. I don't think this one is a surface-mount, though, since it hasn't outright fallen off the board yet (the printer is *at least* ten years old, after all!), which means that if I can tear down the printer without destroying it outright (something of a challenge!) I *can* replace the switch.

...sorry, I'm a right bag o' wind, ain't I? :P (Don't answer that!) Anyways, this new printer/scanner/copier/fax/dishwasher/sewingmachine ( :P ) is going to be the replacement for that dusty old i9900, which will be relegated to large batch prints (since the Brother P/S/C, my *other* main printer, has to puff air into its cartridges after *every* *single* *page* (Really, Batman? *Really*? You *had* to design it to do that...?) and for backup when this wonderful new machine collapses into a heap of sparks or runs out of ink or starts chasing the cat around or otherwise is down for the count.

EDIT: whoops, that's better. We don't need image tags inside of URL tags! Note for the overly geeky -- it didn't actually invisible-ize the post. It just showed the broken URL tag and the image inside. But, now it's working as it should :)

starhawk
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#67 Post by starhawk »

...ah, found the flaw in that printer.

The ESC-P/R driver doesn't support 11x17 printing! (That paper is also called "Double" or "Tabloid".) A lot of what I do, art-wise, is on that kind of paper. It will copy and scan, but not print, to and from that size... I've tried forcing it and that doesn't work.

...ugh.

I wrote the company to complain. Quite honestly, if it won't print 11x17, I'm going to send it packing.

Also -- you're slipping, rcrsn51 :P current driver is 1.6.5 and has been out since April. I installed the DEB of it from Epson's website (I'm on X-Tahr 1b3, aka TahrPup 6.0.2 with XFCE). Installed fine; have not printed a test page yet.

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#68 Post by starhawk »

Epson's official response -- "oh, we don't actually support our Linux driver."

Bastards.

I actually wrote their CEO about the issue, and got absolutely zero response. Anyone here got any ideas for adding compatible paper sizes to the driver? For that matter, anywhere to download the source and fix it myself (maybe)...? I'm no programmer, but if it's done in an obvious way I can fix it. Of course I can't find the source code anywhere... I hope it's not closed-source. Ugh.

I honestly don't want to return this printer, but if I can't print ledger/tabloid/double (all names for the same paper -- 11" x 17" ) then it's just wasting space and it needs to go back.

EDIT: found the source, looking at the PPD for my printer. This might go somewhere.

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rcrsn51
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#69 Post by rcrsn51 »

The ISO paper size A3 is close to 11x17.

starhawk
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#70 Post by starhawk »

But not close enough... I'll try it, for ****s and giggles, but I can very nearly guarantee that it won't work. Too wide and not long enough.

EDIT: nope nope nope nope I'm sorry I can't hear you over all the nope in the room.

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#71 Post by starhawk »

SOLVED :D :D

Credit goes to this guy and to my local guru for finding him.

I've attached a modified PPD file (very slightly modded from that blog) for the WF-7620.

INSTRUCTIONS --
Install the standard ESC-P/R driver package, and install your printer as normal. Then download the PPD attached to this post, gunzip, and place in /etc/cups/ppd, replacing the PPD currently there.

This MAY work with other WF-7xxx Epson printers. I provide no guarantees or promises other than that, for me, it didn't shoot the cat.

NOTE -- even with this modified driver, TahrPup 6.0.2 and variants will need everything printed in PORTRAIT. It does not auto-rotate to landscape and instead prints your landscape image cropped and centered onto a portrait page. (This may or may not be a limitation of CUPS 1.4.8 -- rcrsn51, you want to weigh in on that?)

EDIT (A DAY LATER) -- I changed the model # of printer in the PPD file to match my printer. The original was for a WF-7520, the model before mine. If you are attempting to use my PPD with another printer that's a different model, you may or may not need to change that number to match your printer. Doing so is simple -- open the PPD file in Geany, change and save. Hooray for simple, human-readable text files...
Attachments
Epson-WF-7620.ppd.gz
Actual *.gz archive, will need to gunzip to use. See the instructions in the actual post for details...
(5.51 KiB) Downloaded 311 times

Robin2
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Re: Driver Packages for Some Epson Printers

#72 Post by Robin2 »

rcrsn51 wrote: 1. Install the Epson-Puppy Installer tool from the attachment below. It puts the script "eppi" in /root/my-applications/bin.
How do I delete something installed with "eppi"?

The.deb file does not show up in the Puppy Package Manager "Uninstall" list.

...R

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JoshBeta1
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Re: Driver Packages for Some Epson Printers

#73 Post by JoshBeta1 »

I need help with my Epson XP-230 Series (XP-231). Eppi doesn't works in my Wary 5.5 :oops: :(

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Semme
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#74 Post by Semme »

Josh, where is the Epson pkg you're trying to install? Can you provide a link?
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