Intel OS X 10.5 Drivers for Z3100

[rjnowak]

It looks like HP is not supporting Intel Mac OS X drivers for its wide format printers (e.g.,  Z3100) although it looks like older PowerPC Macs are OK.  Does anyone have any experience with using Leopard with a Z3100?

[Edhopkins]

I have a z3100ps with the APS. I have not migrated to Leopard yet but I just looked at the HP site and there are drivers for:

z3100 and z3100ps for leopard

As for as the APS goes, it has been updated for the z3100 to run under leopard. The documentation of the HP site says that the update only works for the z3100, not the z3100ps. There will a release of the APS for the z3100ps later.  Some have installed the APS for the Z3100 on the Z3100ps. I am waiting for the official release. Hence I have not yet migrated to Leopard.

I don't know where you got the idea that HP is not supporting its drivers under Leopard--but I can not verify that any of this stuff works. I assume it does.

Ed Hopkins
Baltimore

[Colorwave]

No problems for me with a MacBook Pro, (10.5.2, 44" Z3100ps GP, and APS 1.3.2), as long as I use the raster driver instead of the Postscript.  I get random crashes when I try to print with Postscript.  It is usable, if you are patient, but I have found that I rarely need it.  Patience is also needed for PS customers when it comes to firmware and PPD updates, but HP has given no indication of abandoning any of their Mac client base.  They can manage to ignore Mac users in the business sector with nominal consequences, but the market for these printers has a vastly different demographic and they would be foolish to walk away from that many customers.
-Ron H.

[neil snape]

The drivers for Leopard have been out for a while. I do know the 9180 works fine in  10.5.
If I had a Z I would expect the driver to work as posted which states it is for Leopard , well at least for the standard version.

APS is co written by X-Rite so they are always slow on this, and the PS side has to be verified for the Adobe RIP release with every change, hence the delay for the PS releases will always be longer and dependent on the number of changes to the PS specific code.

[rjnowak]

Everyone, Thanks for your responses!

[Edhopkins]

Ron

I am on a mac system and have the 44" z3100ps gps--as you have.  I found your description of how things were going surprising.  The postscript and raster drivers are supposed to work with Leopard; they have been updated for leopard for both the z3100 and the z3100ps. Yet you are having trouble with the ps driver.  Have you contacted HP and reported a bug?  I find this very troubling.  Could it be your configuration and not the ps driver?

And you are using the new APS which is said on the HP site to work with leopard and the z3100 but is specifically said NOT to work with leopard and the z3100ps.  Are you having no trouble at all with this?

Did someone at HP tell you to ignore the statements of the HP website about the APS and just use it or are you just boldly using it and having no--obvious--problems?  Just because APS does not crash does not mean it is "working."

I am still holding back on moving to Leopard and am just trying to get more information from those bolder than me who have moved forward.  (I did move forward boldly and stupidly when leopard first came out and found that the previous version of APS would not run at all. This obviously has been fixed.)

thanks for any information

ed in baltimore

[Colorwave]

Ron

I am on a mac system and have the 44" z3100ps gps--as you have.  I found your description of how things were going surprising.  The postscript and raster drivers are supposed to work with Leopard; they have been updated for leopard for both the z3100 and the z3100ps.

Ed-
I never heard about the new driver release from April 11th of this year (my birthday:  thanks HP).  HP has new users sign up with their website for important news like new driver or firmware releases, but a pet peeve is that they never use the system for anything but marketing.  I just downloaded version 4.3 and will give it a try.
Regarding your theory that my issues with the PPD might be caused by APS, they predate my upgrading to the Leopard compatible version of APS, so I think that they are unrelated.  It certainly seems like the driver and APS work independently in their own boxes, and APS provides profiles and calibrates monitors only.  In theory, a profile should be driver version agnostic, but you are right in saying that HP has labeled the current APS release as not for PS customers.  I will post here if my random crashing issues with the Postscript driver continue after upgrading to 4.3.
-Ron H.

[Colorwave]

I promised an update.  Unfortunately, here it is:
I updated to the most recent PPD and firmware for my 44" Z3100ps GP.  With the current versions of each installed, I can no longer access any custom papers.  The printer utility only has limited functionality.  Printer status shows an icon of a laser printer and yellow exclamation marks for each ink color until I click on the printer details button, at which point the normal icon appears and my ink levels show up.  More of an issue, though, is that when I click on Manage Papers, it says that it cannot get the custom paper list, check to see if the printer is connected.
I called tech support about my problem, and they had me throw away addl. PPD files in my Library, uninstall and reinstall the Printer Utility, and repair permissions.  None of this has helped, and they are currently out of ideas aside from a clean system install.  HP still does not seem to have it together with releasing installers that work without major manual tinkering.  For me, this update is a failure.  To top it off, APS was working for me with the previous PPD and the raster driver, and it now is unable to communicate with the printer.
-Ron H.

[Colorwave]

A little additional info:
I spent about three hours on my own today trying to fix things, after the firmware and driver upgrades.  I had partial success after downgrading to the previous driver, but was not able to successfully download the Printer Utility for 10.4.  For some reason, the disk image failed to mount each time.  I ran the uninstall routine from the old driver again, reinstalled only the raster driver and the new Printer Utility, and now have custom paper choices again.  Unfortunately, though, APS is still unable to see my printer with either Raster or Postscript version loaded.  It only works for monitor calibration.  I'm assuming that the new firmware, which I haven't tried downgrading, is causing the problem.  
-Ron H.
PS:  Every time I run the repair permissions routine in Disk Utility now, I get ten minutes of quickly scrolling HP files that come up broken.  Without exaggeration, the list must be over a thousand items long.

[billbunton]

I saw the same problem with the icon when I had it set up through Bonjour.  When I changed to IP (no HPIP available) the previous icon returns, and printer utility is much faster again (and paper choices seem to work).  I hadn't tried APS, which won't connect.  I didn't update the firmware, just the driver.

[Colorwave]

I wish my problems were only icon deep.  I tried installing the new 4.3.3 PPD again, and somehow screwed things up enough in doing so that I now am not able to get things back to even the limited workability I had yesterday.  Unfortunately, the only advice HP can offer is that I should do a full, clean install of Leopard.  When asked why I should need to do this, they tell me that there are printer specific components that HP does not install with their drivers that may be corrupted, which can only be recovered by a complete OS install.  Funny, that these weren't corrupted until I tried a software upgrade with HP's newest drivers.  Even the firmware seems screwed up, as my printer no longer goes to sleep.  This should have no bearing on the printer settings on my computer.  Be very careful, folks.
-Ron H.