printing to old epson dot matrix very slow

[Guest]

My client has an EPson LQ-1070+ printer.
Her PC was virus infected and we wiped and reinstalled everything. However,
the installer didn't realize the Epson printer was there.
Strangely, one of the applications can print to the Epson just fine without
it being installed.
However, when she can't print anything else to it because it is not
installed as a printer in Windows.
I installed it as a printer using the LQ1070+ driver. Now she can print
other things to do but the print isn't just slow, it's glacial. 2 hours to
print a document which should take 1 minute or less.
Any ideas? I think I need an older driver??

Shirley

 

[Tom Ferguson]

As I recall, the Epson LQ-1070+ is a 24-pin, wide-carriage, mechanical
dot-matrix printer. It is an excellent and very rugged, dependable
performer. Unfortunately, for its present use, it is optimized for high
quality, high speed lettertext output rather than graphics. Windows
rasterises the entire page and prints to dot-matrix printers as graphics.
As a related problem, for most printer drivers for these workhorse, older
printers, no one spent much time optimizing their graphics output speed.
So, taken altogether, output quality under windows can be quite good but
it takes a long time.

That being said, your experience suggests a mind-boggling slowness which
is beyond even these reduced-speed expectations.

What printer driver is in use? That from the Windows XP CD or some other?
Does its present use call for text, graphics or a mixture of the two?

As a diagnostic step, try switching to the Generic IBM Graphics 9-pin
Wide driver from the XP CD.

Tom
MSMVP 1998-2007

 

[Guest]

Tom,
Thank you so much for your reply. I love people that can appreciate these
old printers.
And you're right about changing the driver. Fortunately I decided to try a
search on DOS printing and found a list of 9 possible other 24 pin drivers
on the EPSON site. The first one I tried, the EPSON 24-pin compatible,
worked. (My client who has been waiting days for a fix, said, "Thank you,
Jesus. (smile)" I agreed.
What a nightmare.

 

[Tom Ferguson]

Great! A good solution found, then.

Tom

Tom,
Thank you so much for your reply. I love people that can appreciate
these
old printers.
And you're right about changing the driver. Fortunately I decided to
try a
search on DOS printing and found a list of 9 possible other 24 pin
drivers
on the EPSON site. The first one I tried, the EPSON 24-pin compatible,
worked. (My client who has been waiting days for a fix, said, "Thank
you,
Jesus. (smile)" I agreed.
What a nightmare.