Digital BW, The Print

Sorry to inject a total newbee question, but here goes my background 
and question:

Background:  About 15 years ago I did quite a bit of amateur B&W 
photography and processing.  I used primarily Pan-X and Tri-X 35 mm 
but also dabbled a bit with Technical Pan 35mm and made a few 5x7 
negatives as well.  I printed mostly on Illford non-RC papers, 
mostly 11x14 and 8x10s.  Due to time and flexibility constraints, 
darkroom work is not an option.  I got an Epson 750 printer some 
time back and have used it to make very acceptable 5x7 color prints 
from scanned negatives and digital images.  However, I can't seem to 
get an acceptable B&W image no matter what combination of things I 
try.  They all have rather pronounced dot patterns.  Until today, I 
had assumed this was unavoidable, but I read an article today my 
Clayton Jones (who posts here) that makes me have hope that I may be 
able to get a good print.  I have isolated the issue as coming from 
the printer since the dot pattern is not evident in the on-screen 
image.  I am using Photoshop and have tried printing to the Epson 
750 using color and black only on Epson consumer-grade photo paper, 
but get basically the same degree of "dot patterning".  For B&W 
images printed with the full inkset, I had assumed that is was a 
result of having only a limited number of greys possible, but now I 
am not sure.  Of course, this would be a problem with black only 
since there is only one shade, but the article my Mr. Jones 
indicated that the problem is not as pronounced as I seem to be 
experiencing if one knows how to print properlym,even with black 
only.  I can be fairly picky, but am willing to accept some degree 
of imperfection, since darkroom printing is not an option.  I would 
have been satisfied paying a service to do my B&W printing but I 
can't find a service that does greyscale printing of digital images, 
although there are several acceptable ones for color now.

Question:  Can anyone suggest a some combination of 
ink/paper/software that would give a reasonable point-of-departure 
for getting reasonable amateur-grade B&W prints suitable for 
matting? 

Ideally, I would like a solution that would use an inkset that would 
not require a dedicated printer (that is, not a greys-only inkset) 
and would not require buying another printer or expensive printer 
drivers.  However, this may not be possible.  I can live with 
imperfection to some degree (as subjective as that is).

Thanks in advance for any help.  I'll check over the next couple of 
days to see if anyone has any suggestions.