Long pause when printing from phaser 6360dn

Question

We have a Mac that was recently upgraded to Mac OS X 10.8.3 Mountain Lion and moved to a different location.  The mac is now connected directly to a Xerox Phaser 6360DN via a usb cable.  When any document is printing, there is a pause of about 3 minutes before the printer starts going.  Here are some facts about this issue:
1) Before the Mountain Lion upgrade, this particular mac was able to print fine to the printer over the usb without a pause.  The Mac had Mac OS X 10.6.8 before
2) When the pause occurs, and if you look at the printer spool, there are two jobs listed.  The first says "Setting up printer" or something similar and the second job is the actual document being printed.  The pause is caused by the first job which takes 3 minutes.  After that is done, the printing of the document occurs pretty quickly.  As a workaround, if you click the "x" next to the the first job to delete it, it will move to the next fairly quickly and complete the printing.  However, as you can imagine, this becomes a pain quickly especially when you need to print lots of documents.
3)  When printing in Microsoft Word or other Office apps, clicking the direct print button results in no pause and fast printing.  Going through the menu and selecting "print" results in the pause.  Other applications don't behave that way.  For some reason, using the print button in Word bypasses the part of the process that results in the pause.
4) When in the printer spool/info folder, clicking on the get printer supplies information button results in an error that the printer is not responding.
I'm thinking there is some communication problem between the two devices that causes the hang. How to solve it I don't know yet.  I have tried the following:
1) delete printer and reinstall printer
2) download latest drivers from Xerox and do 1 above
3) Used the reset printing system button to zap everything and do 1 above
4) switch usb ports and use different cables
5) turn off printer sharing and printer notifications
6) no luck with any of these fixes
Not sure what to try next.  Please help

Answer 1

We have a workaround for now.  Using the generic postscript driver bypasses whatever initial operations were being done, so printing is much faster.  However, occassionally the printer outputs pure data instead of the expected output.  That's ok for now, but still would like to get the driver to work somehow.  I might try the Gutenprint drivers to see if that makes any difference.  Was also thinking of installing the usbtb alternative usb backend to see if that makes a difference.  Thanks for the input.
PAHU wrote:
NorNAZ wrote:
2) When the pause occurs, and if you look at the printer spool, there are two jobs listed.  The first says "Setting up printer" or something similar and the second job is the actual document being printed.  The pause is caused by the first job which takes 3 minutes.  After that is done, the printing of the document occurs pretty quickly.  As a workaround, if you click the "x" next to the the first job to delete it, it will move to the next fairly quickly and complete the printing.
This first job - the setting up printer one - is a status check of the printer. It is being sent by the 10.8 printing system to ensure the printer has paper and toner before the print job is sent. The fact that it is sent is most likely due to the Xerox driver, or more appropriately the PPD. To check this is the case, open System Information and select Printers in the left column. In the top right pane, select the Phaser 6360. The bottom right pane will show information about the printer. There will be an entry called Printer Commands. Next to this entry, do you have some text, such as Report Levels?
NorNAZ wrote:
3)  When printing in Microsoft Word or other Office apps, clicking the direct print button results in no pause and fast printing.  Going through the menu and selecting "print" results in the pause.  Other applications don't behave that way.  For some reason, using the print button in Word bypasses the part of the process that results in the pause.
The Word Print icon in the toolbar (ribbon) is by default set to "Print One Copy". This setting bypasses the printer driver settings and submits the print job to the default printer. So as the printer settings are not called, then there is no status check performed and printing is not delayed.
NorNAZ wrote:
4) When in the printer spool/info folder, clicking on the get printer supplies information button results in an error that the printer is not responding.
The Supply Levels section of Options & Supplies does not work for every brand / model of printer. And even if it was working on 10.6, does not mean it will work on 10.8.
Ultimately this will be up to Xerox to fix. You should report it to them when you get a chance, although don't be surprised if they tell you it is up to Apple to fix. The answer to that is Xerox makes the driver, not Apple, so Xerox needs to fix it. Also, other brands are not having the same issue so this points the finger back at Xerox.