OT: printer driver and/or info on Canon BJC-4100

next time get a printer that runs a standard like postscript ..

-Lasse

Have you tried the 'Generic / Text Only' driver that is built into W7? It's in the list but easy to miss. I use it to print to a file so that there are no control codes contained therein.

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The last driver for that was Win98. Maybe it's time to spring for a new printer??

I suppose if you're really insane you could try a VM running Win98 and talk to it via PDFs or something.

Robert Baer wrote in news:CpydnXgdEealyLDNnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@posted.localnet:

it's "planned obsolescence". an Operating System should run ANY program and operate ANY device.

and Microsoft should NOT be able to require other manufacturers to NOT write drivers for obsolete operating systems for current products.

for that matter,why does every different printer require a different driver? there should be a standard priter driver,a std. scanner driver,standard flash drive driver,etc.,that ANY OS should be able to use.

VZ snipped-for-privacy@posted.localnet:

er,

that's a tall order, it hard to make progress if everything has be backwards compatible with old mistakes

MS has been pretty good at it, apart from drivers which is generally something manufactures write, not MS, Most 20 old programs still run on windows

if not run a virtual machine

postscript and few others should be standard for printers, but it requires more smarts in the printer so you have to pay more

twain for scanners ditto

flash drives just work on every desktop OS I can think of

-Lasse

Unfortunately, the Omniscient Operating System is still in the alpha-test stages.

I agree.

Because the printers are physically different... different capabilities, different resolutions, and (in many cases) different communication protocols.

And, because (competing) printer manufacturers don't have much incentive to cooperate in producing a common printer driver. They'd rather concentrate on making *their* printer and driver better (or cheaper to make and sell), and don't want to give advantage to the other guys they are selling against.

Free enterprise, y'know. It has lots of advantages, and also has its down sides.

Unless you are willing to grant the Government the ability to define a single standard for ALL printers, and shoot-in-the-head any manufacturer who dares offer a printer which does not exactly conform to the Great Centralized Government Standard in any way (including offering *more* features than the Standard requires), you won't get that.

That sort of approach to industrial design and production didn't work out terribly well for the Soviet Union, when they tried it. It's hell on innovation, hell on "giving people what they really need, and not forcing them to pay for that which they do not want", etc.

Real-world, workable architectures for this aren't "monolithic, one size fits all" implementations. Instead, they're layered and flexible, providing good standardization for those aspects of the problem it makes sense to standardize, and allowing flexibility and configuration elsewhere.

Closest example I've seen in the printer world - CUPS (the Common Unix Printing System). This system provides a set of filters to accept input files in many formats, converts them to a standard internal rendering notation (I think it's all PDF-based these days), then provides several ways of translating this common notation to something that a specific type of printer can receive (e.g. raster images, text or binary PostScript, text plus escape sequences, etc.), and then provides a bunch of different back-ends to send the data to the printer itself (operating system parallel-port driver, TCP/IP, and so forth).

With the flexibility of CUPS, supporting a new printer is often just a matter of writing a PPD file which describes its capabilities and says which rendering engine to use, and then configuring the back-end to send the rendered data to the correct place.

CUPS runs on most Unix-type systems. It may well have been ported to Windows... and if not, it's not too hard to persuade Windows to simply send print jobs to a CUPS server running on a Unix box (or in a small virtual machine).

The demark for the printer is the driver. That's just how it works/is....

-- Les Cargill

The "excuse" for Win7 is that it's probably a 64 bit machine, and 32 bit drivers aren't going to work on a 64 bit machine.

Put an old machine on the network as a printer server? That might not work either.

-- Les Cargill

innews:CpydnXgdEealyLDNnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@posted.localnet:

I ran into one on the weekend that required a reboot to be recognized under both XP and Win7. I'm guessing that it was created on a Mac because there's a bunch of garbage and hidden files including one named tmp.SnowLeopard.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

(snip)

Their grip on manufacturers is even more draconian than that. When HP released their P1505N laser printer, the driver CD included one for Win98 even though that OS was no longer supported by MS.

Not long after, MS "directed" HP remove that driver from their website and it is NLA anywhere, not even the numerous driver download sites.

On one of our machines we use Win98SE to run some legacy software. While everything else on the network can access ALL(*) the printers, because no driver is available the Win98 box can use all of them

(*) A Win7-64 box can't see a Canon iP4200 hiding behind an ethernet/USB print server, even though it has drivers for it. It needs to connect to it via a direct USB cable. Go figure.

Well, i could by any printer available,BUT the ink is so damn expensive for the printers these days it is cheaper to by a new printer when the cartridge runs out. That pricing scheme is total BS; the "throw-away" mentality is too destructive to the health of the nation and should be taxed to oblivion.

Well, i fiddled around..using the console "DOS" mode,i can COPY CON: LPT1: and get ascii out in WYSIWIG format. So, now all i need is a program to emulate that..

You are absolutely correct. If one looks carefully when (at least) Win2K is installed, umpteen drivers are installed for everything, almost including the infamous kitchen sink. And this is BEFORE looking at MB and other system resources. They all work..then are totally abandoned after OS installation. It is not as obvious when Win7 is installed, but drivers are installed for the MB resources; I have an older MB with ethernet, sound and video that are supported by the MB maker up to and including Win2k PERIOD, jump in the lake for newer OS support (that INCLUDES the net). So, the Win7 experience fully supports my case as well as your case. All we need is a good hacker to extract that universal technology and make a universal driver disk for sale.

innews:CpydnXgdEealyLDNnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@posted.localnet:

How about DOS, Win3.11, Win95 and Win98SE?

• NO. There are TWO Win7 installation disks, one for 32-bit and one for

Please tell me more. I have a similar bizarre problem with my new Win7/64 box talking to a Dell 1320cn printer to be "offline" despite being accessible via http:. I can trick it into going online by briefly disabling the SNMP protocol and then going round again.

You might find the above trick works for your invisible printer too.

Sending a small print job to it then goes though all the motions except for printing out the page. Sending a large print job allows you to watch the job via web browser arriving on the printer and then "Cancel" itself at the last moment. I am puzzled as to what is going on.

Initially I blamed firewall incompatibility but took that off and it made no difference. This seems to be some flaw in network connectivity - the Win7/64 can see the printer and transfer data to it but not print!

Regards, Martin Brown

Unlikely but you could try looking for a generic Canon driver and hack a similar length name to the name string of your printer. But if it was as simple as that they would probably have done it. You might get lucky but I doubt it. HP is by far the worst for lack of new OS drivers for obsoleting perfectly good robust hardware.

Because the level of abstraction has increased enormously from the old days of peeky pokey prodding at a centronics io port by user mode code into something resembling a real protected mode operating system.

Odd numbered versions of Windoze are usually better 3, 5 & 7 have been OK. 6 was stillborn and 8 looks like it is going to be as well.

Why are you surprised? We live in a consumer capitalist society. If you don't upgrade your PC every three years the makers go out of business. The same is true for most peripherals as well. I have a beautiful old HP5300 scanner that lacks driver support post XP that I am loathe to throw out because it is so well engineered. It now resides in the Village Hall on an XP box where it gets even more hammer.

And where is the money in that? You are a low down lousy communist expecting something for nothing and destroying US jobs! If you feel so strongly about it write your own driver and then give it away for free.

BTW next time buy one of the remaindered or re-engineered Dell colour laser printers that have third party toner cartridges available. They require a steady hand to assemble but apart from that are excellent.

The initial capital cost (£100) is higher than a low end inkjet but if you buy wisely includes 2 sets of toner. Running costs are tiny by comparison. Also laser printer output doesn't run when it gets wet.

Regards, Martin Brown

Robert Baer wrote in news:fYidnSz27pxMSLDNnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@posted.localnet:

I have a few flash drives that work with my W98SE system. and I'm not running that NUSB33E.exe generic driver.

I don't expect DOS or W3.1 to run newer stuff.