Digital BW, The Print

Folks,

every now and then my printer will stop printing and my Mac 
freezes if I print via the piezo driver.  Today I printed a certain file 4 =

times, and it stopped in the middle of # 4.
I had to restart the Mac and to load the file again. I started 
printing and the print job was discontinued again.

I´ve got the feeling, that kinda working-space-overflow is the 
reason.  The question arises, whether the piezo driver spools 
the job somewhere, and if this "somewhere" is running out of 
space, the whole process is stopped.

Why do I believe this?  Because sometimes, if I start a piezo 
printing job it is clearly to be heard, that the driver deletes large 
(temporary?) files, before the printing job begins. But this 
doesn´t happen each time. Mostly the job starts right away.
So my impression is, the driver sometimes forgets to delete 
spooled files and then some overflow happens.

On the other hand this never happens if I print even much larger 
(RGB) files via the Epson driver. So it can´t be a problem of too 
small scratch disks or spool folders. But every spool folder 
should overflow sometimes, if the temporary files are not deleted 
after the print job is finished.

Anyone experienced this ??

PS I dedicated 4 scatch disks (each 2 gig) to PS and a spool 
disk with about 20 gig to the epson driver.  Also there is plenty of 
space on my system disk. So the problem seems to be the 
Piezo Driver, no?

Thanks for comments.
Bernd

Berne-

I'm a PC user, but I think it works the same on the MAC. The piezo 
driver doesn't use the printer spool functions. It is using the 
export function that (as far as I can tell) puts the file in RAM.

This might be another reason that everyone advises making one print 
at a time. I have paper feed issues if I make multiple prints, so I 
haven't run into this, but I used to get a similar problem with my 
Kodak dye sub until Kodak wrote a raster driver that let you spool 
unlimited numbers of prints. With the Kodak printer, you could 
improve the number you could "spool" by adding memory to the PC or 
the printer. You might be able to test this by REMOVING some ram and 
seeing if the number you can "spool" goes down. If it does, then it 
might be worth while to add some ram?

Good luck,

Tom O'Connell

TomOC@yahoo.com
www.thomasoconnell.com




--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "ruhrfoto" <ruhrfoto@y...> 
wrote:
> Folks,
> 
> every now and then my printer will stop printing and my Mac 
> freezes if I print via the piezo driver.  Today I printed a certain 
file 4 =
> 
> times, and it stopped in the middle of # 4.
> I had to restart the Mac and to load the file again. I started 
> printing and the print job was discontinued again.
> 
> I´ve got the feeling, that kinda working-space-overflow is the 
> reason.  The question arises, whether the piezo driver spools 
> the job somewhere, and if this "somewhere" is running out of 
> space, the whole process is stopped.
> 
> Why do I believe this?  Because sometimes, if I start a piezo 
> printing job it is clearly to be heard, that the driver deletes 
large 
> (temporary?) files, before the printing job begins. But this 
> doesn´t happen each time. Mostly the job starts right away.
> So my impression is, the driver sometimes forgets to delete 
> spooled files and then some overflow happens.
> 
> On the other hand this never happens if I print even much larger 
> (RGB) files via the Epson driver. So it can´t be a problem of too 
> small scratch disks or spool folders. But every spool folder 
> should overflow sometimes, if the temporary files are not deleted 
> after the print job is finished.
> 
> Anyone experienced this ??
> 
> PS I dedicated 4 scatch disks (each 2 gig) to PS and a spool 
> disk with about 20 gig to the epson driver.  Also there is plenty 
of 

> space on my system disk. So the problem seems to be the 
> Piezo Driver, no?
> 
> Thanks for comments.
> Bernd

Bernd,

you don't mention how much RAM you have allocated to PS and what size file 
you are printing (dpi, MB, etc).
 Also, what versions of PS, piezo and mac OS you are using. 
There was a bug with PS 5 in which it didn't erase its scratch discs. It's worth 
using a disc utility (or Retrospect) to look for invisible files that shouldn't be 
there in scratch/spool discs before you start a job.
For the record, I haven't run into this at all with any version of photoshop or 
piezo plug-in and either MacOS 8.6 or 9.1. And I do print multiples and hand 
feed the paper (on the 1160).
Could something entirely unrelated cause the freeze? Like file sharing or 
other network "events".....?

Antonis


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "ruhrfoto" <ruhrfoto@y...> wrote:

> Folks,
> 
> every now and then my printer will stop printing and my Mac 
> freezes if I print via the piezo driver.  Today I printed a certain file 4 =
> 
> times, and it stopped in the middle of # 4.
> I had to restart the Mac and to load the file again. I started 
> printing and the print job was discontinued again.

> Bernd,
> 
> you don't mention how much RAM you have allocated to PS and what size 
file 
> you are printing (dpi, MB, etc).
>  Also, what versions of PS, piezo and mac OS you are using. 
> There was a bug with PS 5 in which it didn't erase its scratch discs. It's worth 
> using a disc utility (or Retrospect) to look for invisible files that shouldn't be 
> there in scratch/spool discs before you start a job.
> For the record, I haven't run into this at all with any version of photoshop or 
> piezo plug-in and either MacOS 8.6 or 9.1. And I do print multiples and hand 
> feed the paper (on the 1160).
> Could something entirely unrelated cause the freeze? Like file sharing or 
> other network "events".....?
> 
> Antonis
> 
> 
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "ruhrfoto" <ruhrfoto@y...> wrote:
> > Folks,
> > 
> > every now and then my printer will stop printing and my Mac 
> > freezes if I print via the piezo driver.  Today I printed a certain file 4 
> > times, and it stopped in the middle of # 4.
> > I had to restart the Mac and to load the file again. I started 
> > printing and the print job was discontinued again.

Antonis, thanks for answering.
My system is as follows:
OS 9.2.1, PS 6.01, 1,5 Gig Ram, 1 Gig allocated to PS.
PS never freezes, even if I have working-files (virtual files ) of 3 
Gig. I can print 2 Gig RGB files via the Epson driver on my 7500, the 
system never freezes, but it may freeze if I print a 150 MB file via 
the Piezo driver on my 1160.
My system HD is a bit fragmented, but the biggest not 
fragmented part is about 5 gig.
If that is of interest, one should assume, that the piezo driver 
spools to the system HD, though PS and the Epson Driver have 
separated scratch disks ??
Thanks Bernd

PS the main question seems to be whether the Piezio drv.  does or does not 
spool. If I remember it well J. Cone once stated, that it does not spool. But why 
then does it delete sometimes huge amounts of data before it starts printing 
???

Bernd,

it makes no sense that the piezo should spool: it seems to print right away 
which suggests sending packets of data to the printer from the image that is 
either already in PS scratch or in RAM. As for the deleting noises that could be 
PS which is known to do housekeeping chores between tasks.
Suggestion: Use the purge commmand before printing. See if that does 
anything to help.


The Epson driver is, I think, the one that always writes to the system disc - but 
that's not the issue here.

As a practical matter: what dpi are you running on the 1160 that you need 
150MB in grayscale? Are you sure the print benefits from the extra data? You 
are probably trying to run at 720 dpi  - but have you seen visible benefits 
compared to lower dpi? Actually even 12x18" (30x45cm) at 720 dpi is 106 
MB.
Also: is there a MB limit past which the freeze happens? 

On another issue - the 2 gig limit on the scratch discs was I think a limit of 
earlier Mac operating systems.

I could be wrong on some of these ideas, so please take with a grain of salt!

Antonis 



--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "ruhrfoto" <ruhrfoto@y...> wrote:
> My system is as follows:
> OS 9.2.1, PS 6.01, 1,5 Gig Ram, 1 Gig allocated to PS.
> PS never freezes, even if I have working-files (virtual files ) of 3 
> Gig. I can print 2 Gig RGB files via the Epson driver on my 7500, the 
> system never freezes, but it may freeze if I print a 150 MB file via 
> the Piezo driver on my 1160.
> My system HD is a bit fragmented, but the biggest not 
> fragmented part is about 5 gig.
> If that is of interest, one should assume, that the piezo driver 
> spools to the system HD, though PS and the Epson Driver have 
> separated scratch disks ??
> Thanks Bernd
> 
> PS the main question seems to be whether the Piezio drv.  does or does not 
> spool. If I remember it well J. Cone once stated, that it does not spool. But 
why 
> then does it delete sometimes huge amounts of data before it starts printing 
> ???