I have the 3800 connected via USB, am on OSX10.4.11, and CS3. I print using the ICC method, select 'Photoshop Manages Colors' and check 'No Color Adjustment' in the usual fashion. Say for example, I print an image that is 4"x5" on letter size paper. The image itself looks fine, but the resulting print also shows a faint tone outside of the bounding box, right up to the maximum printable area. It's faint, like if you ran something at 254, 254, 254.
after tons of trouble shooting, it seems like some sort of OS issue as it affects my Epson RX680 in the same way. Installed drivers are the current ones posted on Epson's site. Photoshop CS3 is also last version posted.
Think of it this way. If you made a small 4" x5" image, and in Page Set-Up selected Letter Size, and positioned it way down on the bottom of the page in the Print Preview window.
On my PPC OSX10.4.11 Macs, all works as it should, the printer makes the paper feed all the way down to the bottom where the image starts, and then the head begins to print only the image.
On my Intel MacPro OSX10.4.11, no matter what I do, the printer always starts printing right at the very top of the page, all the way across, all the way down to where the image starts. It prints a faint tone everywhere the image isn't, as areas within the image that are 255/255/255 stay completely paper base white. The offending tone is perhaps 254/254/254 or 250/250/250 (just a guess). Faint, but none-the-less there.