Digital BW, The Print

Panther is great, but I can't get the 3000 to print an 8X10 in
anything under, say, eight hours.  The head passes every five to ten
seconds over the paper.  Actually, I give up long before the end, but
what is printed seems ok.

This happens both with the latest Epson driver printing normal stuff,
like text, and with QTR (Gimp 4.2.5).  I also downloaded the latest
Gimp, I think, 4.2.6, just to try out that driver.  Same story.

Epson support seems to be running out of suggestions (reload driver,
reset printer, etc.)

The thing works great in OS9, but I'd prefer to work in CS.  Anyone
run into something similar?