Digital BW, The Print

HELP !!!!

I'm trying to print out a fairly large image through the Piezo driver to 
a 3000
 printer and all I get is horizontal stripes, it looks as if the image 
information is
just being scrambled.

In the past when this has happen, and it seems to happen with alarming 
frequency,
I have just made the file smaller, not the image size, and this has worked.
but I can't do that here as it is just a larger image, it will be 34" tall.

Otherwise everything works properly, I can send a normal size print and 
it works.

Specifics are, Mac, OS 8.5 older machine, Genesis MP .  Software is the 
5.1.3 version
hosted by photoshop 5.5.   380 megs of RAM and 1.5 gig scratch.

I know others have written of this problem, was there a fix ?

TIA

J.Z.