I found myself in need of a printer urgently today. I had an important business letter to print and hand-deliver and my Epson Photo Stylus 950 ran out of cyan ink. If you know Epson inkjet printers, you'll know that they refuse to print if one cartridge is empty. As I had no spare cartridge (light cyan but not cyan!) I needed one urgently. Trouble is, you cannot buy a genuine one for this particular printer for love nor money, at least not from a bricks and mortar business. Only online. But I needed it now and no-one delivers (yet) in 4 hours if you order online.
So, I could save the document to a USB drive, nip out to a friends to print it out or I could buy a new printer. Now, before you think I am a rich person with more money than sense, let me say in my defence that I print a lot of documents and my previous laser had died on me. Lasers are cheaper than inkjets go as far as running costs are concerned, especially if you buy toner online. So, it was off to PC World and Staples to see if I could buy a cheap mono laser just 2 shopping days before Christmas.
In the end I bought a colour laser. Surely this was extravagent? Not really, as I managed to buy one for £100... yes you heard me, £100. Staples had a Konica Minolta 2400W for £149.00. I asked if it was available to take away and the young assistant said he would ask. Turned out that the answer was yes, but there was a problem. They couldn't find any leads, discs or even a box for it. Did I still want it? As I was musing this over, they said it would be reduced as a result of the missing items. I asked how much and the assistant had to ask the manager. Back came the word, I could have it for £100! Now, I was prepared to pay £125, so of course I bit their hands off there and then!
Now, if you have read my blog before, you will know I am a Mac user and you may also know that this particular printer is Windows only. Now Samsung (my previous now dead laser was a Samsung), say their printer (I am referring to the CPL 500 series) is Windows only, BUT, if you do a search on their site, you will eventually find some Mac drivers and they work fine. Minolta however are adament, strictly Windows only. Oops, you say, I made a blunder. No, I can say with a certain amount of smugness, as I know that there are a host of generous-hearted folk out there writing drivers for all sorts of printers for the Linux and Mac platforms. Hurrah for the open-source community. So it was that in minutes of arriving home I had the printer plugged in, drivers installed and was clicking print within minutes.
However, all did not go according to plan, as the output was smudgy and faint in parts. No problem, take out the toner, give it a shake and put it back. Still no joy. In the end, I managed to get one page out of ten to print OK, so off I set with just 10 minutes to spare and hand deliver an important letter for a client. Phew! After that, I decided to buy some black toner, just in case the toner (only a starter one with a measley 1500 capacity) was low. When I installed it I still had poor printoputs. In the end I solved the problem.
Here is my hint for others:
Hint: Make sure that before use, you check the fuser separator levers are DOWN. They are raised when a printer is stored or not used for a long time. I made the assumption that as the store might have printed out samples they would be down but in fact they we up and hence my printouts were rubbish. Once I had put the levers down my prtintouts were great. Lesson learned.
Now, if anyone else finds they have or are thinking of buying a printer that is advertised as Windows only and they need Linux or Mac drivers, then check the internet. For Minolta 2000 series printers, check here : sourceforge.net
So, I could save the document to a USB drive, nip out to a friends to print it out or I could buy a new printer. Now, before you think I am a rich person with more money than sense, let me say in my defence that I print a lot of documents and my previous laser had died on me. Lasers are cheaper than inkjets go as far as running costs are concerned, especially if you buy toner online. So, it was off to PC World and Staples to see if I could buy a cheap mono laser just 2 shopping days before Christmas.
In the end I bought a colour laser. Surely this was extravagent? Not really, as I managed to buy one for £100... yes you heard me, £100. Staples had a Konica Minolta 2400W for £149.00. I asked if it was available to take away and the young assistant said he would ask. Turned out that the answer was yes, but there was a problem. They couldn't find any leads, discs or even a box for it. Did I still want it? As I was musing this over, they said it would be reduced as a result of the missing items. I asked how much and the assistant had to ask the manager. Back came the word, I could have it for £100! Now, I was prepared to pay £125, so of course I bit their hands off there and then!
Now, if you have read my blog before, you will know I am a Mac user and you may also know that this particular printer is Windows only. Now Samsung (my previous now dead laser was a Samsung), say their printer (I am referring to the CPL 500 series) is Windows only, BUT, if you do a search on their site, you will eventually find some Mac drivers and they work fine. Minolta however are adament, strictly Windows only. Oops, you say, I made a blunder. No, I can say with a certain amount of smugness, as I know that there are a host of generous-hearted folk out there writing drivers for all sorts of printers for the Linux and Mac platforms. Hurrah for the open-source community. So it was that in minutes of arriving home I had the printer plugged in, drivers installed and was clicking print within minutes.
However, all did not go according to plan, as the output was smudgy and faint in parts. No problem, take out the toner, give it a shake and put it back. Still no joy. In the end, I managed to get one page out of ten to print OK, so off I set with just 10 minutes to spare and hand deliver an important letter for a client. Phew! After that, I decided to buy some black toner, just in case the toner (only a starter one with a measley 1500 capacity) was low. When I installed it I still had poor printoputs. In the end I solved the problem.
Here is my hint for others:
Hint: Make sure that before use, you check the fuser separator levers are DOWN. They are raised when a printer is stored or not used for a long time. I made the assumption that as the store might have printed out samples they would be down but in fact they we up and hence my printouts were rubbish. Once I had put the levers down my prtintouts were great. Lesson learned.
Now, if anyone else finds they have or are thinking of buying a printer that is advertised as Windows only and they need Linux or Mac drivers, then check the internet. For Minolta 2000 series printers, check here : sourceforge.net
Thank you New Beltane - after 20 years of MS Windows, I decided to try Apple once again (after cutting teeth on Apple II) only to realise that my Magicolor 2400W printer did not have a driver for Mac. I thought it was a showstopper but your post gave me heart and after searching the web and downloading the driver from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=108751 (thank you all open source driver builders), I finally have it working. As a competent windows user, this was not all that easy as I had to find out where the downloads were going and how to use File Finder. And then download and install Foo and Ghost before finally installing the printer driver. Anyway I know have it working in b&w - hopefully colour will come after a reboot.
ReplyDeleteThanks again. John in melb (jrm@mcraeit.com.au)
Hi John,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Stephen, and I need help with installation of 2400W with Mac.
I bought my son a Macbook recently for school, and would like to setup the Konica Minolta 2400W to work with it. I downloaded the 5 files from Sourceforge.net tried to install in the Macbook.
The 2 *.dmg files were simple enough. However, I don’t what to do with the *.rpm files.
Also, there was a *.gz file that I uncompressed, but I don’t know what to do with the files inside.
I am a long-time Windows guy, and don’t really know my way around Mac very well yet. Hope you could give me some pointers. Thanks!!!
Best regards,
Stephen Tan
Singapore
stephen@starfire.com.sg
Stephen
ReplyDeleteYou only need to download and install one of the .dmg files, the rest are for Windows and Linux.
If you have a Mac with an Intel chip then download and install the universal one; f you are using a G3/G4 or G5 you need the other one.
Hope this helps.
Steve
PS Just to confirm the url is http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=108751&package_id=117406&release_id=364131
ReplyDeleteThe uni.dmg is the Universal (Intel and PPC version)
The .dmg is just PPC version only.
Hi, the URL is correct. Actually I clicked on both *.dmg files.
ReplyDeleteThe first time I tried to print, I was directed to a window where I had to add the printer. That was when it said that the printer was not properly installed.
Earlier, when I again tried to print something, there was a small exclamation mark next to the 2400W in the printer listing.
Then I tried again, and this time it seemed to work and no pop-up appeared. Except the printer wouldn't print.
When I went to System Preferences and clicked on "Print & Fax", I see the 2400W listed. I can see the print job in the print queue, but it does not print.
If you could give some pointers where I went wrong, I would appreciate it.
Best regards,
Stephen
For anyone having problems with the driver and setting up the printer download my tutorial from my .mac site here.
ReplyDeleteIts a pdf so you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Thanks Steven, which file is it? There are many photos, zips and galleries. Sorry to be such a pain...
ReplyDeleteStephen
It usually takes a short time for the .mac server to refresh. Once it does it will show p in the Tutorials folder. In the meantime I have emailed you the pdf direct.
ReplyDeleteSteve
It usually takes a short time for the .mac server to refresh. Once it does it will show p in the Tutorials folder. In the meantime I have emailed you the pdf direct.
ReplyDeleteSteve
Hi All,
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to add this note for future wanderers. I have Snow Leopard and the drivers in itself didnt cut it.
I installed the new GhostScript and Foomatic RIP and it started working.
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/MacOSX/foomatic#usage
Thank you so much for all this. I am a new Mac user, but have old printer and wasn't warned that our 2400W wouldn't work with Mac - we may have rethought the purchase; however, having been a "geek" before my retirement, I figured out how to do this with all your help. We were just about ready to go buy a new printer and resent it terribly. So I figure I'm not so old yet even though I just had my 65th birthday.
ReplyDeletethank you. I was using vmware before but this is 10 times faster. 1/8 pages I print though are duds -- not a flawless driver.
ReplyDeletebut still awesome :)
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