Epson 7890 Driver with a 7900 printer?

[datro]

The green channel in my 7900 (2nd head, installed 2 years ago after my first one failed, also in the green channel) has died.  While overall the printer is in excellent condition and I am tempted to install a new head as I did before and move on, this printer is now 7.5 years old and the pros/cons seem to weigh pretty heavily in the direction of not spending the money on the new head.

I print mostly B&W and I know that I could convert the printer to Piezography, but I also need to print color on occasion so I've ruled out that option.  I could also just upgrade to a P9000 and be done with it...I'd have the benefit of the newer inks and capability to print larger.  Canon might be an option, but until the new printers actually start shipping and we get some answers on ink longevity there are too many unknowns for me.

I've seen several comments here in the past that suggest the 7900 can work with the 7890 driver.  I am assuming that the Orange/Green nozzle pair (and associated cartridges and ink system) are simply ignored by the 7890 driver.  Before I go down the path of trying this, I'd like to hear from anyone that has actually done it.  Obviously I will need to make new profiles for any color printing since I would be using 8 inks instead of 10, but I'm assuming the ABW characteristics would be exactly the same as before.  My basic questions:

Is it necessary to install 7890 firmware or do anything on the machine itself, or is just changing the driver enough to make this work?

Is there anything in the 7890 driver that doesn't work when driving a 7900 (no matter how insignificant)?

Any other gotchas to be aware of?

Thanks,
Dave

[LGeb]

The green channel in my 7900 (2nd head, installed 2 years ago after my first one failed, also in the green channel) has died.  While overall the printer is in excellent condition and I am tempted to install a new head as I did before and move on, this printer is now 7.5 years old and the pros/cons seem to weigh pretty heavily in the direction of not spending the money on the new head.

I print mostly B&W and I know that I could convert the printer to Piezography, but I also need to print color on occasion so I've ruled out that option.  I could also just upgrade to a P9000 and be done with it...I'd have the benefit of the newer inks and capability to print larger.  Canon might be an option, but until the new printers actually start shipping and we get some answers on ink longevity there are too many unknowns for me.

I've seen several comments here in the past that suggest the 7900 can work with the 7890 driver.  I am assuming that the Orange/Green nozzle pair (and associated cartridges and ink system) are simply ignored by the 7890 driver.  Before I go down the path of trying this, I'd like to hear from anyone that has actually done it.  Obviously I will need to make new profiles for any color printing since I would be using 8 inks instead of 10, but I'm assuming the ABW characteristics would be exactly the same as before.  My basic questions:

Is it necessary to install 7890 firmware or do anything on the machine itself, or is just changing the driver enough to make this work?

Is there anything in the 7890 driver that doesn't work when driving a 7900 (no matter how insignificant)?

Any other gotchas to be aware of?

Thanks,
Dave

I'm doing this. I got a 7900 with a bad orange channel for cheap with the intention to use it with Piezography or just QuadToneRip. My first attempt was to rewrite the Gutenprint driver to use fewer inks (doesn't look too hard). However I thought it might be worth a try with the Epson 7890 driver, and I was surprised it worked. I'm on a Mac, so no idea about how it works on Windows. My printer was out of orange from the auto head cleaning the previous owner had on. I installed a refillable cart with piezoflush in it. I also put Piezography Gloss Optimizer in the Green channel.

You will need to make sure the auto head cleaning is off, as it will try and try before it fails, wasting a lot of ink and destroying the head more.

I have had no issues so far running this. I noticed that sometimes it tried to auto clean when I did a cleaning from the user menu, but not a Power Cleaning (so far). I now do head cleaning using color pairs in the maintenance mode. So far it hasn't done anything odd this way. The factory 7890 profiles work fine, the output looks just like my old 3880 (same inks). I don't know how much difference the orange and green inks made to the output, so I don't know if their contribution to the gamut will be missed.

If you print a job sheet you can see how much of each color ink was used. It still reports some orange and green as being used. It does this under quadtone rip as well. In both cases I can see non has been put on the page, so I assume it's spraying all inks into the waste tank after prints. So you will still use up the inks.

ABW works fine using the 7890 driver. I haven't tried it with the 7900 driver.

I think that's all I know. Hope it works for you. It's easy enough to test - you can have both drivers hooked to the same printer on the Mac.

[datro]

Thanks for this useful information.  Sounds encouraging.  I'm on Windows and I'm hoping I will be able to have both drivers installed simultaneously (as you have done on the Mac).

Have you attempted a Black Ink change?  Are you printing with PK papers or MK papers?

[LGeb]

Thanks for this useful information.  Sounds encouraging.  I'm on Windows and I'm hoping I will be able to have both drivers installed simultaneously (as you have done on the Mac).

Have you attempted a Black Ink change?  Are you printing with PK papers or MK papers?

I have switched ink, using the printer control panel. I usually print on PK papers. One bonus is I can apply the gloss optimizer to prints that show a lot of gloss differential or I want extra protection for handling (which requires yet another driver installed for the printer - QTR).

[datro]

In case anyone else is considering doing this, here's what I've found so far....

I've now installed the 7890 driver on my Windows system using a dedicated TCP/IP port (different from the 7900 driver port).  It is definitely possible to have both the 7900 driver and the 7890 driver installed at the same time in Windows.  Printing to the 7900 hardware using the 7890 driver does work, however as I expected there are a few things which don't work.

First, when you look at your Printer Preferences for the 7890 driver, the information regarding ink levels is missing (see first picture below).

Second, the Epson Status Monitor 3 window (which opens when you send a file to the printer) reports "Attempting to connect to a different device from that specified in the driver..." and does not report the status of the ink levels, the maintenance tank, or the paper setup currently in the printer (see second image below).

The file sent to the printer DOES print, it's just that the 7890 driver (at least in Windows) is smart enough to know that the device to which the file is being sent does NOT match the driver, and therefore it cannot report any status information from the printer.

Regarding print quality of the 7890 driver vs. 7900 driver:  More work to do here, but a quick test indicates that printing with the 7890 driver does bypass the Orange and Green inks completely.  I need to make some new profiles and then print some test images which I can compare with earlier versions (printed using the 7900 driver) to accurately evaluate differences in gamut.  But my quick tests so far show that there is a visual difference, especially in greens (no surprise), yellows (this is somewhat surprising), and slight changes in light cyan shades.

Dave

[LGeb]

Glad it's at least printing for you on Windows. It's funny, on the Mac the driver doesn't show the ink levels, but if you go to supply levels for the 7890 it shows the orange and green inks. Seems the mac isn't as tightly coupled between the driver and the printer.

I'll be interested to hear how much gamut has been lost. I've read that for photographic use the orange and green didn't add much, but sounds like that might not be true. Good to keep in mind when deciding on a new printer.