[Leica] Third time's a charm for Epson 3800 printer

[reid at mejac.palo-alto.ca.us (Brian Reid)]

I just finished installing my third Epson Stylus Pro 3800 printer; it is a 
replacement for the one Epson shipped me in October 2008 which was itself a 
replacement for the one I bought in December 2006. I'm so glad I bought the 
extended warranty. And since it's new and shiny, it will still sheet-feed 
Museo Silver Rag, which is an awesome time-saver.

When these things work, they are great. When they don't work and have to be 
replaced, they are an amazing pain. Probably my need to drive it via 
Ethernet instead of USB or FireWire increased my pain, but the documentation 
says it's supposed to work via Ethernet.

During the course of this install, I learned that the latest rev of the 
Epson ethernet card can't autoconfig against a GigE switch, and needs to be 
set manually to 100 Full Duplex.

I learned that the Epson LFP Panel software is not compatible with either 
IPP or LPD; it works only if you drive the printer with EpsonTCPIP or 
Bonjour or Appletalk drivers.

I learned that if you are going to replace an Epson pro printer and you have 
downloaded config information or paper profiles into them, you ought to 
extract that information and save it to disk before you ship the bad unit 
back to Epson, else you will have to rebuild everything. The LFP panel can 
export media settings to a file (never mind that it calls that operation an 
import) but I found no tool to export other configuration settings like 
names and ACLs and NTP servers other than "print 
screen".

I learned that Ultrachrome inks really don't like sitting unused with the 
power off for 2 weeks while their owner goes to Australia, and that you have 
to run a Power Clean to fix it. The Power Clean is of course not mentioned 
in the documentation.

I learned that the Epson network firmware will disable itself if it doesn't 
find link on the Ethernet port, which it won't do if the autosense fails, so 
each time you run an experiment to get the Ethernet working you have to go 
back into the front-panel menu and re-enable Network mode. (Hint: "arp -d; 
ping" is your friend when you are debugging this junk because it will tell 
you if the layer-2 network stuff is working on the printer.)

I learned that the Epson network firmware only DHCPs on power-up, and that 
if you make a DHCP-related change to the configuration, you have to power 
cycle the printer regardless of what the documentation says.

Brian Reid
recalling a quote on the TV show "House" in which a patient says "Dr House, 
I know you must be a very good doctor, because you are such an obnoxious 
jerk that they wouldn't let you work here if you were a bad doctor." That's 
how I feel about the 3800. It's such a pain in the ass that I wouldn't let 
it into my life if it weren't a fabulous printer.