So I’ve discovered there appears to be more than one place, and one way, to turn on the network communication functions in the 9880 printer. Epson is less than clear on this even in the service manual.
So after having finely burrowing down into the network setting from the printer control panel I discovered that indeed the correct ip addresses and subnet mask were exactly what they should be. How they got that way; damned if I know. Problem seems to have been it wasn’t turned on.
First thing that I didn’t get was you have to turn on network setup, back out, and then go back in and at that point you can get to the (hidden?) network menus/settings you can’t see the first time through.
Next I didn’t figure I need Apple’s Bonjour Service running; don’t know what it really does save muck about with network setting and maybe screw things up; could this be the source of many network problems? So it’s turned off. I don’t do Apple; don’t like Apple, at all, period! The only Apples I like are Red Delicious!
So, at this point everything seems to be working quite nicely, thanks for the pointers all. All the other printers seem to be working quite happily without changes and maybe its wishful thinking on my part, but the whole network, computers, servers, printers etc. seem to be a good bit more responsive. Hell I even seem to have managed to figure out how to make the damn printer stop doing constant auto cleans to the tune of anywhere between 3cc to 30cc of ink (apparently it cycles through four levels of auto clean) every time I look at it, even sideways.
So once again thanks for the pointers.
Later Larry