Recently bought a new Dell XPS 8500 w/ Win 7, went to hook up my trusty 'ol Epson Action Laser 1500 and... no drivers found on the list, even the extended list. Epson site says this printer is no longer supported. Many Googles say HP LaserJet III drivers will work... but it don't.
This AL 1500 is almost 20 yrs old. It's been berkeleying bulletproof awesome. One toner refill a year and a half ago. There's no indication that this printer shouldn't keep running forever. Have I just been obsoleted?
I was going to take it to the local printer shop just to have it cleaned inside, maybe they'll know more about the drivers.
As usual, thought I'd ask GRM first.
Sadly yes you've been obsoleted...have you tried the Laserjet 3 driver with a USB/Parallel adapter? That's the trick that supposed to work, not just using the LaserJet 3 driver with the printer as-is.
Reliable printers are PURE GOLD, I think it's worth spending money to hang onto it.
A 20 year old printer? Where do you find the tractor-feed paper?
Try the LaserJet Series II driver, not the III. And don't select something with extra letters after the II, like a IID, or anything like that. They are different animals.
I used to repair both HP & Epson 20 years ago. Been a very long time since I've seen one of those Epsons. The Epson dot matrix printers had some dip switch settings to change compatibility between Epson and IBM. Some of their early lasers had similar settings. I can't remember what the compatibility differences were, but one was the HP LJII. The other might have been propitiatory Epson and that would keep the machine from working with the HP driver.
pinchvalve wrote:
A 20 year old printer? Where do you find the tractor-feed paper?
Tractor-feed went out of style in the late 80s...except for on dot-matrix ribbon printers, which are still often used today for printing paychecks and bills.
pres589
SuperDork
5/16/13 8:17 a.m.
In reply to fasted58:
One of the first search returns on Google gave the following;
"I have an Epson Action Laser 1500 working perfectly in Win 7 64 bit and here is how I did it.
My computer does not have a parallel port, so I bought an adapter cable USB to parallel. If your printer has the port, you don't need that cable, just hook up normally.
I first plugged the adapter cable to the puter, Win 7 recognized it and installed the drivers needed. Then I hooked it up to the printer and went through the Add Printer routine. First pick the interface LPT1 or USB depending on your setup. When the window where you pick your printer opens, click the "Windows update" button at the right lower end to get more options. Pick HP LaserJet III and you are in business."
Copy/paste content there so if it isn't right I appologize.
Can you find out what version of PCL your Epson runs. Maybe PCL3? Install a PCL3 driver for it.
peter
HalfDork
5/16/13 8:58 a.m.
Check out the manual...
http://files.support.epson.com/pdf/al1k__/al1k__u1.pdf
It has an "HP Emulation Mode" that you select via the buttons on the printer. (Chapter 4). You want LaserJet IIISi or so.
I know this doesn't help, but that's why I stick with workgroup-level or better HP Laserjets... They run forever (I've seen many examples of 20 year old ones still running), and supported dang near forever.
Look at the Xerox Universal Print Driver
Grtechguy wrote:
Look at the Xerox Universal Print Driver
What he said. I have been able to keep quite a few printers in production here at work using those. Also HP has a universal driver that may work.
