Digital BW, The Print

Steve:  Once you have the 1290 driver installed, both the 1280 and 
1290 drivers will work.   They seem to coexist just fine.  

Think of it this way.  Your B&W 1280 printer is the American 
ambassador.  The 1280 driver is his French interpreter.  The 1290 
driver is his Italian interpreter.  They are each in separate rooms, 
with a headset connecting them to the ambassador.  Either interpreter 
can translate for the ambassador, and he'll understand, as long as 
they both don't talk at once.  But neither interpreter understands 
what the other interpreter said or did. 

Let's see if I can give you useful information from memory (I 
installed the driver a few days ago).  I think the file you download 
is a self-extracting zip.  Double click on it, and extract it to a 
temporarly folder on your hard drive.

Install the driver by clicking on Setup.exe.

When it asks you about "customizing the port," just skip that step.

Then you have to go back in and tell the driver to use the same port 
as the desired 1280 uses.  It will be on a pick list including your 
parallel port and other ports you may have on your system.

So you end up with two drivers, the original 1280 and the new 1290 
drivers, each printing to the same Epson USB Port for the B&W-ink 
1280.  You probably also have a second installed copy of the 1280 
driver, which is for your color 1280 printer.

The quirk is that the printer won't "talk back" to the 1290 driver.  
When the 1290 driver asks, "How much ink do I have left?," the 1280 
thinks, "I'm a 1280.  That query is for someone else, not me."

So the ink monitor on the general tab of the 1290 driver's Properties 
sheet will be blank, and the 1280 driver won't know what you printed 
with the 1290 driver.  So the 1280 driver's estimate of how many 
pages you can print "like the one just printed" will be off after a 
while.  But the 1280 ink monitor will show the correct amount of ink.

I now use the 1290 driver for printing, and the 1280 driver for 
maintenance stuff like printhead and ink level checks.  I don't bring 
up the 1280 Properties while printing with the 1290, because that 
*might* cause a conflict.  I'm not saying it will, but it might.

Hope this is helpful.

--Peter Klein
Seattle, WA

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Stephen A. 
Tucker <stephentucker@h...>" <stephentucker@h...> wrote:
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com,
> "Peter A. Klein <pklein@2...>" <pklein@2...> wrote:
> > 
> > <snip>
> >
> > A couple of people have asked me where to find the
> > 1290 driver.
> >
> > <snip> 
> 
> Peter,
> 
> Thanks for the updates on your 1280/1290 driver
> experiments.  Now that I have the 1290 driver
> downloaded, I not quite sure what to do with it!
> I'm still somewhat of a beginner at all this
> drivers/curves stuff.
> 
> So . . . how do I intall the 1290 driver?
> 
> I have two 1280s connected to a PC via an
> internal USB board.  I want to install the
> 1290 driver on printer "1280 (Copy 1)" without
> screwing anything up.
> 
> Thanks,
> Steve Tucker