Epson 850NE on Apple Network

[squirtgunboat]

Hi,

I am not sure if anyone can resolve this issue for me, but I will give it a shot.

I have several 850NE printers on my school network. They are all set for TCP/IP. The district (without any prior warning) switched to DHCP and I have had to tell my staff to reselect their printers in the chooser.

HOwever, the 850 appear as visible in the chooser but can not print as an error message appears that the printer is not responding.

I have used the admin tool to reconfigure the printers but they appear with no settings on the network and named as "none".

I have managed to locate the administrators manual and according to the manual I can "reset the defaults" by turning the printer off and then holding the reset button in the back for X seconds until the lights blink simutaneously and then once the green light appears nonflashing press the reset button again and it will have reset to default settings.

OK, I have managed to do this on 4 of my 6 printers, however timing is an issue and I have found that the 4 I have resolved, are different in their times and it took me nearly 5 hours to get these configured and reset to DHCP. They are functional. The 5th printer I messed with for 3 hours and I still do not have it reset.

My question, is this. Is there an easier way to reset the ethernet settings other than what the manual says?

I have called Epson and their is no help for anything out of warranty and nothing for a school district.

I can not go back to TCP/IP settings to get in the admin tool to set, and at this point my only other option (other than making these last 2 printers table legs) is to take it to another school in the dostrict that has not been changed to DHCP yet and hope that with the admin tool I can reconfigure it correctly.

Sorry so long winded.

SG

 

[macgeneral]

SGB,

WOW!
How frickin scary is that.
We're running 850ne's here in the building (a k12) and they are networked. We're now runnning NAT through our Cisco Router.

Tell me, were you using public or private IP's for these Epsons before the district bent you over? And do you all print from outside the building? I just wondered. You configured the subnets on these using EpsonNet?

Did you look at this tech Support article:

http://support.epson.com/webadvice/wa0158.html

Seems to merely confirm what you already are into.


Help me help you

MacGeneral

 

[squirtgunboat]

Hi MacGeneral-

Sorry it has taken a bit to answer this, been busy with getting an additional 125 i macs this summer and I am only one person.

The Epson's, we were all static IP's assigned to every bit of equipment, anyone from anywhere in the district could print to themby selecting the proper zone. I had configured the printers from the Epson utility, several versions as I had originally thought that it was an old version or corrupt one that was my problem.

I managed to resolve this, but it was complicated. I took each individual printer, connected it to a hub as well as my G4 to the hub (my G4 is USB and the printer is not) and went to the utility and set it to default. Only by making my own small LAN was I able to get to this printer. Then I put both back on the school netowrk and was able to find the printer by its ethernet address, rename and set to DHCP. Once I could print I was able to reconfigure all the others the same way.

was a mess, truly was, a bit of advacne notice would have prevented alot of anxiety and stress and saturday inschool work!

SG