Suggestions on how to speed up a 9900?

[JillHK]

Hi Newbie  question.

just got a Epson 9900. I'm using a MacBook Pro 10.6.8 2.66 GHz Core i7 with 8 GB memory. I'm using CS5 to print from running across a network. Printing is very very slow. For example I had a 350 meg file 36" x 44 inch print on canvas and it took 12 hours. I must be doing something wrong?

Not sure if this would help or even if it is possible but I have an old G5 with 4 Gigs of ram and I'm pondering using it as a print server.

What can you suggest to speed up the system.? 

I'm pretty new to printing large. I'm an artist so I do not need a lot of speed.

thanks!

[abiggs]

Jill, 12 hours is pretty crazy. How long did it take from the time you clicked 'print' until you saw the print head starting to do its job?

[Wayne Fox]

Either you've wiped out ram and your Mac is slamming virtual memory (you can use activity monitor to check that) but I'd be checking your network ... sounds like you might have a serious problem (bad cables, bad router, bad access point, some device is out of control wiping out bandwidth)

the computer itself has plenty of power, using the old computer as a "server" probably won't help much if at all.

[na goodman]

I agree, it sounds like a network problem. The computer specs are fine.

[JillHK]

Ok, I'll check into the suggestions given to me here and I'll post with more info and let you know what i found out.

thanks!

[JohnHeerema]

I'd say that your symptoms are consistent with "trashing" - a condition in which the demands on memory require frequent swaps back and forth from the disk that backs virtual memory. You can check this yourself quite easily, by running the Activity Monitor. It can tell you how many page swaps have happened, and whether any memory is still in the free pool.

If you have enough memory, you might check to see that you have adequate space on both your scratch disk and your spool disk.

[na goodman]

Why don't you just try plugging in USB to your Mac and see how long that file takes to print. That would be an easy solution in seeing if the network is the bottleneck.

[Schewe]

just got a Epson 9900. I'm using a MacBook Pro 10.6.8 2.66 GHz Core i7 with 8 GB memory. I'm using CS5 to print from running across a network. Printing is very very slow. For example I had a 350 meg file 36" x 44 inch print on canvas and it took 12 hours. I must be doing something wrong?

Uh, ya think?

12 hours? Really?

As otherwise suggested, try connecting directly via USB (it's a MBP so it's portable) and try printing directly...note if your network is THAT slow, I would put in a gigabit switch and speed up the transfers...a 1.5 GB file takes about 20 mins to print at 2880 with high speed on. 12 hours? ya gotta be nutz! That's wack...

[JillHK]

Hey, with all due respect I've never seen a large printer in action, I said I was new to large format printing. So I had no baseline to judge if what I had was normal. It was not until I stumbled upon a YouTube video that made me realize something was not right.

Anyway the USB connecting did the trick. The network was the problem.

I'm looking into setting up the G5 to push spooled files from the MacBook Pro over the network and then print to the 9900 via USB.

[Farmer]

That's probably not a great solution.  If there's a problem with your network, you should identify what the problem is and resolve it.  It could have been the cable, it might be the router or switch - there are a number of things that could be going wrong, even the host computer itself or even the printer (though that's pretty unlikely given the scenario).

[Wayne Fox]

As Phil mentioned fixing your network is by far your best solution. Pushing the spooled file to another computer will most likely be as problematic as pushing it straight to the printer.   The network is the problem ... your solution does not eliminate the network.

Guessing it's something pretty simple.  It's usually just a bad ethernet cable or a router that needs a firmware update.

[JohnHeerema]

One of the reasons that network component failures can go undiagnosed for some time, is that TCP/IP is so reliable, that a failing component may go undetected because packet retries make the network appear to be fine.

I once had a problem where I could always print about the first lineal foot of a print job, and then the print job would fail. There were no obvious problems with the network, but it turned out that one of the switching routers was flaky - replacing the router fixed the problem

[davidh202]

I don't print on a network and don't know if you can even address the printer without this,  so just a thought....
Do you have the Epson Net Config utility installed and configured properly?
 

[Farmer]

You can print quite happily without the EpsonNet utility.  All you need is the driver, and to create a TCP/IP port with the appropriate address.

The Epson utility allows you to handle things like DHCP and still always find the printer, and to configure a printer over the network (rather than the control panel), and so forth.

[davidh202]

Thanks Phil,
  As i said, I had no idea if it was necessary It was just a thought 

[Gene Coggins]

I have seen situations where a Mac will not properly run on a network unless it was connected to the network with a crossover Ethernet cable rather than a normal straight through cable. Go figure. Or you might have a defective Ethernet cable. It might be worth a $12 try to replace your cables.

Gene

[JillHK]

Everyone over thought the issue. Its not a faultily cable, bad switch, problematic router or TCP /IP errors. When the printer firmware was upgraded it reset the printer back to 100 MB / half duplex. Once my husband logged into the switch and noticed the duplex error he was able to resolve the issue within 10 minutes.  He reset the network on the printer and ensured the switch was set to the same speed /duplex. Now the 9900 prints like a champ.Thank you for your input. My husband is an IT Geek, when we set the printer up he was a bit to lazy to really look at it.
Problem solved!

[Farmer]

I'm glad the problem is solved, but upgrading the network firmware doesn't reset it back to 100MB half duplex...there's no way to set that manually, so I'm really curious as to how you reset those settings?