Error message or program crashing when printing on Epson printer

Question

In July 2008, I upgraded my computer from a MacBook to a MacBook Pro (and bought a Time Machine so that all my files are backed up regularly!) I then bought my wife a MacBook Pro in November 2008. We both used to have iBook G4s.
We have an Epson EPL-6200 Laser Printer that we print from using our Airport Express. It used to work fine printing documents from any program and printing wirelessly from the iBook G4 computers we had when we bought the printer around three years ago.
But since I have switched to a MacBook and now a MacBook Pro, I have all kinds of problems printing on the Epson EPL-6200 printer. At first, my MacBook did not print remotely at all. I had long conversations with both Apple and Epson, knowing there was a problem with the Epson driver. To top it off, the problems seemed worst with Microsoft Office, so both of them also said it was Microsoft's fault!
Now that Epson has upgraded its drivers and I have dowloaded the latest one, and switched to a MacBook Pro, I can print some files easily -- Word documents now print immediately, although I get an error message saying that the printer is not connected. But trying to print from other programs such as Firefox either takes a very long time (around 5-8 minutes for one page) or causes the program to crash.
Any ideas? The strange thing is that my wife's computer and mine are exactly the same (running Mac OS X version 10.5.6) but behave slightly differently when printing. I can print from Firefox, albeit after a long time per page, whereas if she tries to print from her computer in that program it instantly crashes.
I guess we still have driver issues with the Epson EPL-6200.
But I have looked on the Apple support forums and there seem to be a lot of printer-related issues like this. Do you guys have any suggestions? Or is there a printer that will work well with our MacBook Pros, an Airport Express and/or Time Machine (we have both) and when printing remotely?
All the best,
Alex

Answer 1

hey,
well, i use the below machines with the current mac os (10.5.6).
i (kind of often) had issues with the network printer epson epl-6200.
of which every issue could be resolved by myself, more or less quickly.
i.e. until the last update (10.5.6).
none of my machines is able to get anything through the network to the printer.
at least they don't get the printer to print a page.
today i spent (almost) the whole day, trying out things to get it fixed this time.
none of it worked.
just to let you know:
i can access the printer through its http-interface.
i can ping it.
it gets recognized by the printer/fax-dialog in the system-preferences.
here's what i tried so far:
i tried to install the osx driver for the epl-6200 with every single protocol that's available in osx (i.e.: Appletalk, IPP, Bonjour, EPSON (IP), etc.)
i of course tried to update the driver with the latest software available on the epson-website. and did the thing with the different protocols again.
i tried the "generic" postscript driver of osx, too.
then it was getting interesting:
i tried to get "cups" for the epl-6200. i don't want to get into details here, but to drop some names:
foomatic-rip (combined with ghostscript)
http://linuxfoundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/MacOSX/foomatic
gutenprint (doesn't have an epl-6200 driver included)
pxlmono (doesn't have an epl-6200 driver included)
to sum that up:
there are two drivers on the "openprinting"-site (foomatic). but one is (of course) the official epson driver.
but:
there is a "third-party" driver downloadable on that website.
http://openprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Epson-EPL-6200
well, i downloaded it, installed the required additional software (foomatic + ghostscript), all very fine. i could choose it in the osx printer setup menu.
but:
my printer still won't print a single page.
the error messages i got:
other than the above post none of my programs ever crashed, or was "dead slow".
but:
the printing job got constantly stopped, i could restart it, but it was then stopped again. without any error message.
there was the same thing with the halt of the printer (also monitored in the printing cue window). i could restart it, but it would stop again. without any error message.
but i also got two decent error messages: :))
the first involved the pdftoescpage.app, either it was failing (shown in the printer cue window), or it was crashing (i got the error message in a separate window popping up). according to folks on the net this malfunction involved user permissions, so i to set up the "right" permissions (giving everybody the right to do anything (rwx) - i know i shouldn't have :)) ). but it didn't help. still crashing or failing.
the second decent error message, finally:
"double free" - what that meant, i cannot tell.
conclusion:
i don't know. :))
required action:
i will await the next osx update, and hope it'll be fixed then. :))
good night, y'all
p.s.: ahh, if anybody knows anything i didn't and should try. please drop a line. thx