Hmm, that's a good point, I have not tried printing from Tiger ... are you thinking it could be a Tiger x86 driver glitch?
Don't know what Tiger x86 is.
After tons of trouble shooting, it seems like some sort of OS issue as it affects my Epson RX680 in the same way. Almost as if it is trying to emulate some sort of proof by printing that tone. 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, the head travels all the way across back and forth, all the way down to where the 4" x 5" 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.