Topic: New Z3100 driver & firmware-worth it? (Read 5671 times)

Geoff Wittig · « **on:** November 09, 2007, 06:32:51 am »

Just a quick question for those who have tried upgrading to the newer firmware and driver. I'm running a plain vanilla (no APS) 24" Z3100 under Windows XP, with the 5.0.0.4 firmware and associated Windows driver. I've been frustrated by its tendency to screw up page orientation unpredictably, trying to print a landscape format image in portrait orientation regardless of what the preview shows, wasting another expensive sheet of paper. On the other hand, some posters note different quirks and bugs in the newer driver involving distortions or faulty placement of the image on the page.

For those of you who've already updated, is it worth it? Are the new bugs less annoying than the old ones? Colors and paper handling any better? Are there workarounds for the new bugs? I may take the plunge tomorrow, after wasting another sheet of Crane silver rag last night due to the portrait/landscape bug.

rdonson · « **Reply #1 on:** November 09, 2007, 08:10:20 am »

Geoff, I've updated to 6.0.0.8 on my base Z3100. Things went well and overall I think the combination of firmware, driver and printer utility seem to work smoother together than what I had with v5. That's just my impression not a scientific statement.

There are obviously some bugs that are driving some folks near to distraction on the Mac.

I thought that when they said we'd have the ability to control the ink load it might be in the driver as Epson did. HP chose to make it part of the paper type calibration. Perhaps not a bad idea but certainly it will be a time consuming process to fine tune ink load this way.

The bugs I'm working to resolve at this point with 6.0.0.8 are that the printer doesn't wake up when its sent a print job and that when it doesn't the Windoze printer spooler doesn't handle this very graciously. The workaround is to stop the spooler, delete spooler files and restart the spooler. Fortunately a simple batch file makes this easy (thanks again, George, for the tip). This may be a reconfiguration of the TCP/IP connection in printers/faxes but I haven't worked through that yet.

The only real disappointment is that HP hasn't released and updated version of the doc "Working with non-HP papers" yet.

rdonson · « **Reply #2 on:** November 09, 2007, 09:54:10 am »

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Ron,

I've reconfigured the IP like Stu suggested and works like a charm!! No need to stop-clean-start the spooler anymore.

Best
George
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=151497\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I created a new IP port for the printer but had questions about some of the options available and what the right choices were.

Geoff Wittig · « **Reply #3 on:** November 09, 2007, 12:54:49 pm »

Ron-
Thanks for the information. I've been waiting to profile some new papers until I was feeling ready to tackle the new firmware/driver. I guess I'll dive in tomorrow.

Geoff.

Roscolo · « **Reply #4 on:** November 09, 2007, 01:33:51 pm »

Quote

Just a quick question for those who have tried upgrading to the newer firmware and driver. I'm running a plain vanilla (no APS) 24" Z3100 under Windows XP, with the 5.0.0.4 firmware and associated Windows driver. I've been frustrated by its tendency to screw up page orientation unpredictably, trying to print a landscape format image in portrait orientation regardless of what the preview shows, wasting another expensive sheet of paper. On the other hand, some posters note different quirks and bugs in the newer driver involving distortions or faulty placement of the image on the page.

For those of you who've already updated, is it worth it? Are the new bugs less annoying than the old ones? Colors and paper handling any better? Are there workarounds for the new bugs? I may take the plunge tomorrow, after wasting another sheet of Crane silver rag last night due to the portrait/landscape bug.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=151476\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I've only been printing with the new firmware / driver for a few hours. I don't know about Portrait / Landscape, because I make it a habit to only print in Portrait and just rotate images in Photoshop - then I know - BUT one improvement I have immediately noticed:

With the old FM / Driver, I would not get consistent borders, it would be off by like an 1/8 or 1/4 inch. Now the borders are EXACTLY where I put them. Big timesaver on my jobs. BTW, this may not be Firmware or Driver related, it's quite possible I had some settings off, but if so I could never figure it out. Now borders are spot on.

Roscolo · « **Reply #5 on:** November 09, 2007, 05:44:35 pm »

Well, forget what I said in my previous post. Now it's offsetting the prints again, by about 1/4 inch.

Anyone else have this / know what causes this? I haven't changed any setting, and a few hours ago prints were exactly where I placed them on the page in Photoshop. Now they are off a bit. Maybe it's skew.

Replicolor · « **Reply #6 on:** November 19, 2007, 08:18:26 pm »

I would not update; custom paper sizes will not print at all.

Jim Cole · « **Reply #7 on:** November 19, 2007, 11:16:45 pm »

Interesting... I just printed a 24x22 custom size print using the new firmware and drivers with no problem at all. At least on CS2 on an XP system.

I haven't tried printing yet using CS3 after the latest updates.

Jim

rdonson · « **Reply #8 on:** November 20, 2007, 06:37:43 am »

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I would not update; custom paper sizes will not print at all.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=154261\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Works fine for me. I am using Qimage for printing.

Bob Walters · « **Reply #9 on:** November 20, 2007, 08:20:43 am »

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Works fine for me. I am using Qimage for printing.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=154349\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Yeah.......... me too. Plain vanilla 24", Windows XP, and Qimage.

namartinnz · « **Reply #10 on:** November 20, 2007, 02:20:14 pm »

Does the printer still trim 3 inches off satin & gloss papers when installing the roll?

Neal

Charles Gast · « **Reply #11 on:** November 20, 2007, 05:38:13 pm »

I have updated and use windoze xp. It still cuts off a few inches with the luster paper when you load it. It also prints the calibration pattern in a portrait orientation which wastes more paper. It prints the profile pattern in a landscape mode saving paper so it is meaningless that it does the cal pattern the way it does.
I have an added feature since the firmware upgrade. It always tells me I need to synchronize my profiles between the printer and the computer even though it is already done. Repeated synchronizations do nothing to remove the message.
The driver in photoshop also forces me to keep the printer from printing using sRGB as the printing profile and use the profile I created using the built in spectro instead. More utter nonsense. I left it unchanged accidentally once and it printed a 24x36 that could only have been appreciated by Timothy Leary.

Jim Cole · « **Reply #12 on:** November 20, 2007, 06:25:06 pm »

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It also prints the calibration pattern in a portrait orientation which wastes more paper. It prints the profile pattern in a landscape mode saving paper so it is meaningless that it does the cal pattern the way it does.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=154498\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Charles,

I use the same setup and the printer prints the calibration pattern in landscape mode using as little paper as possible when using rolls.

In the HP driver, do you have the option checked to "Autorotate"?

Jim

dkeyes · « **Reply #13 on:** November 21, 2007, 04:00:28 am »

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Does the printer still trim 3 inches off satin & gloss papers when installing the roll?

Neal
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=154449\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Still trims 3 inches off my Pro Satin rolls using OSX. I've found the upgrade to be uneventful both in what it added for me and any headaches other than it takes a few more seconds to get the print dialogue box to show up.
- Doug

alanmcf · « **Reply #14 on:** November 21, 2007, 11:08:16 am »

I was most pleased with Windows Vanilla 6.0.0.8 that I reloaded a roll and it cut off nothing! As my Z3100 has been quite a learning curve...

It is a pleasure to say that my more recent experience using QImage (also with a learning curve) been quite pleasant. My recent discovery is that if I define a 24"x8.5" image size, place several 4"x6" test prints side by side (can even do two of the same with different rendering intents), and in the driver choose "Remove top/bottom blank areas"... then I get my test strip using only 4 3/8" of paper! I laugh because this forces me to work on more than one image at a time, which should help move my creative endeavors along. With the remove blank areas setting I only need to define a few 24" paper sizes.

As I have learned from this list, one hint is to go into Start/Settings/PrintersAndFaxes" to define the defaults. From here first choose File/ServerProperties to define your paper sizes (if you do it in the Z3100 driver you cannot delete or correct mistakes) (this effects all printers system wide). Second right-click the Z3100, choose Properties, and choose PrintingProperties. Here set the defaults which for me include CustomOptions/Best, RemoveTopBottomBlankAreas (for rolls only), and ApplicationManagedColors. Note that setting these things just in QImage should work, however it does not always work. BTW, a long time ago when printing from PS CS2 I would always rotate my image before printing as otherwise I was wasting massive amounts of paper.

Finally (and it is probably not necessary), it is possible to define a second Z3100 printer such as one for Black & White with its own set of defaults by using the AddPrinterWizard (this does not install or reinstall driver software). First (assuming a network printer) choose LocalPrintAttachedToThisComputer. Next choose the same TCP/IP port that was already created. Next choose the hpi310xa.inf (from the previous manual install the latest driver) done a couple of weeks ago. Finally choose KeepTheExistingDriver and give the new "printer" a name. I also then synchronized the papers.

Alan

namartinnz · « **Reply #15 on:** November 21, 2007, 02:28:51 pm »

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Finally (and it is probably not necessary), it is possible to define a second Z3100 printer such as one for Black & White with its own set of defaults by using the AddPrinterWizard (this does not install or reinstall driver software). First (assuming a network printer) choose LocalPrintAttachedToThisComputer. Next choose the same TCP/IP port that was already created. Next choose the hpi310xa.inf (from the previous manual install the latest driver) done a couple of weeks ago. Finally choose KeepTheExistingDriver and give the new "printer" a name. I also then synchronized the papers.

Alan
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=154703\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Alan

Wouldn't it have been easier to setup a new printer definition in Qimage for B&W? I have about 10 different settings for my Z3100 and Epson 4000 depending on what sort of paper they will be printing on. One click away and the printers are ready to go. I'm always amazed at how valuable a program Qimage is.

Neal

alanmcf · « **Reply #16 on:** November 21, 2007, 09:08:49 pm »

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Alan
Wouldn't it have been easier to setup a new printer definition in Qimage for B&W?
Neal
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=154748\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Neal, QImage would not seem to hold the choice between "Application Manage Color" and "Printer Manage Color" in the driver... so it required me to set them as the default in the driver via "Printers And Faxes"/Properties. I am not saying this problem would exist today if I tried it again . Alan

Author Topic: New Z3100 driver & firmware-worth it? (Read 5671 times)