Running 3220 without C1 or C2 RIP? or PCL?

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  • maltobello
    Junior Member
    • Feb 2010
    • 5

    #1

    Running 3220 without C1 or C2 RIP? or PCL?

    Dear Experts,


    My company has 17 Canon IR 3220 devices in our offices. These are all installed with ImagePass C1 and C2 RIP's. We have been having issues deploying Windows Vista because we are not able to get stable, up to date Postscript drivers for the devices. We are also looking at deploying Windows 7, 64 bit and there are no Postscript drivers available for these devices on this platform. At this point our options are:
    1. Use PCL drivers which support Vista 32 bit and 64 bit platforms. Presumably these will also work on Windows 7.
    2. Bypass/remove the C1 and C2 RIP's on these devices. Windows 7 32 and 64 bit drivers (Postscript) are available for this configuration.
    We have tried the PCL drivers in the past, but our graphic designers were not pleased with the output. Not sure if settings could be adjusted to achieve something they would be OK with (I work for a Civil Engineering Consultant, we have 800+ people, probably 25 graphic designers). My understanding if we remove the RIP is that print speed will improve, but quality will suffer.

    Can any of you weigh in on what we should expect with each of these options? Is there anything else I'm missing that we could try?

    Thanks in advance for your help.
    Last edited by maltobello; 02-04-2010, 04:46 PM. Reason: spelling, clarification
  • charm5496
    Service Manager

    Site Contributor
    1,000+ Posts
    • Apr 2008
    • 2387

    #2
    More than likely you will never get drivers for the C1 or C2 rip as they are both out of date. The internal print boards from Canon are going to have print driver support up to windows 7 which is what you are going to need. After removing the rip you are going to have to install the multi-pdl board (2 boards) into the back of the machine and since they are probably going to be used you are going to have to cross your fingers and hope you don't have to reload firmware on your devices to get everything talking properly. I would reccomend having this done even if the install goes alright. Your process speed will be faster yes, but your print quality will not be what it once was having the imagepass controller removed. If you have windows 7 and VT processor chip why not have them run in XP mode for the files that they need to have printed in higher quality? And the ones who are not quality concerned should be fine with the PDL board installed.
    Accidents don't just happen. They must be carelessly planned.

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    • teckat
      Field Supervisor

      Site Contributor
      10,000+ Posts
      • Jan 2010
      • 16083

      #3
      are u using the PS3 4.07 driver ????
      **Knowledge is time consuming, exhausting and costly for a trained Tech.**

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      • SCREWTAPE
        East Coast Imaging

        Site Contributor
        2,500+ Posts
        • Jan 2009
        • 3396

        #4
        Your company should consider upgrading if that's an option. IR3220,s are good models but there are bit out dated and as charm said there's a lot of things to think about with the options your considering.

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        • SCREWTAPE
          East Coast Imaging

          Site Contributor
          2,500+ Posts
          • Jan 2009
          • 3396

          #5
          Originally posted by teckat
          are u using the PS3 4.07 driver ????
          I don't see that version for the imagepass C1,C2 post script driver.
          There is a PS driver v4.70 but that's for the IR3220. Is that what you are refering to.
          I don't see a v4.07 driver.

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          • teckat
            Field Supervisor

            Site Contributor
            10,000+ Posts
            • Jan 2010
            • 16083

            #6
            sorry you are right> i meant to list it as PS3 4.70 for irc 3200/3220/ & 2620


            **Knowledge is time consuming, exhausting and costly for a trained Tech.**

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            • SCREWTAPE
              East Coast Imaging

              Site Contributor
              2,500+ Posts
              • Jan 2009
              • 3396

              #7
              Originally posted by teckat
              sorry you are right> i meant to list it as PS3 4.70 for irc 3200/3220/ & 2620
              LOL..
              Don't sweat it man we all have our moments.

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              • KenB
                Geek Extraordinaire

                2,500+ Posts
                • Dec 2007
                • 3944

                #8
                Just for laughs, did you happen to try the PostScript driver for the Canon GX-200 RIP?

                Not an exact match, but functional. It's similar enough that the accessories should match up for your iR C3200, and your graphic artists won't complain about any degradation in print quality.

                Of course, you would want to test this THOROUGHLY before rolling it out to the masses, thus preventing a potential revolt.

                The download "package" contains 32 and 64 bit drivers, as well as Vista support. I would think that the Vista drivers will work in Winders 7.

                You can download the file here: Canon U.S.A : Disclaimer
                “I think you should treat good friends like a fine wine. That’s why I keep mine locked up in the basement.” - Tim Hawkins

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                • maltobello
                  Junior Member
                  • Feb 2010
                  • 5

                  #9
                  Thanks everyone for your replies...

                  Charm....
                  You are correct, Canon has come out and said that they don't plan to update drivers for the C1 and C2 RIP, so I'm pretty much giving up hope on that solution. This leaves us with PCL drivers or trying to bypass the RIP so we can use the IR3220 drivers (these do not work when attempting to print through the RIP).
                  XP mode in Windows 7 would be difficult to manage...we'd have to decide which apps get installed in that mode, and it is not set up to standardize across many PC's. While our designers would be most critical of print qualty, we have many other users producing documents that need similar quality as well. it's probably more important to have consistent output if the quality is something we can live with.
                  When you say the print quality wouldn't be as good, what do you mean by that? do you mean resolution, color accuracy, consistency or something else? The difficulty of getting the devices running without the RIP (i.e. the need to install the multi-PDL boards, might mean this isn't a feasible solution anyway).

                  teckat...
                  we've made the mistake of trying to install the IR3220 drivers and found that they do not work with the 3220 with either C1 or C2 RIP.


                  Screwtape...
                  Upgrading the devices would be the best way to deal with it, but just not an option at this point...maybe 6-12 months from now, but not a certainty then either.

                  KenB...
                  Interesting idea...definitely something I will test. We have had bad luck with the current Postscript drivers, which should work with Vista. Users can usually connect to one device (but sometimes can't), but when they try to connect to a different queue, there's some kind of conflict and the print spooler crashes. Can't hurt to try something different.

                  All...
                  I notice no one suggested just using the PCL drivers. Is this just a bad idea overall? We did some early testing, and definitely saw differences, but weren't sure if these could be addressed through config/calibration? Any thoughts on this?

                  Thanks again for your help.

                  Comment

                  • KenB
                    Geek Extraordinaire

                    2,500+ Posts
                    • Dec 2007
                    • 3944

                    #10
                    You never mentioned which applications your Creative folks are using.

                    I will tell you that any major graphics application, InDesign, PhotoShop. Quark Xpress, PageMaker, even Acrobat all fare way better with PostScript, as these are PostScript based applications.

                    Without giving a dissertation on the differences between the two, color will be more accurate, images crisper, and fonts will be more detailed than with PCL. Color curves and profiles go out the proverbial window with PCL. No amount of tweaking on a PCL RIP can change this; it's just the nature of the beast.

                    PCL6 does a better job than PCL5 (it's HP's version of PostScript), but it's still PCL.

                    I don't know if you use Command Workstation or not, but it can't do anything other than reprint jobs that were sent with PCL. Jobs sent with PostScript, though, can be changed drastically.
                    “I think you should treat good friends like a fine wine. That’s why I keep mine locked up in the basement.” - Tim Hawkins

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                    • mrfixit51
                      Lead Service Technician

                      1,000+ Posts
                      • Oct 2008
                      • 1975

                      #11
                      Let me play devil's advocate, and ask,, what is the push to upgrade(downgrade) to Vista? Are you buying new PC"s, or just updating the O.S.? I can think of no compelling reason to switch to Vista unless new PC's are the reason. Unfortunately, the 3200 family, even though it still produces some of the best "Business Color" in the industry is getting a little long in the tooth, and Canon does not have to keep the systems running forever. All products have their day, and the Advanced Color imageRunners are the current new kids on the block, and that is where Canon is going to focus their energies. Your best solution might be to avoid the O.S. changes till you can afford a new herd of copier/printers.
                      "Once a King, always a King, but once a Knight is enough!"

                      Comment

                      • maltobello
                        Junior Member
                        • Feb 2010
                        • 5

                        #12
                        KenB,

                        We have a few subsets of our users. Roughly speaking, these include:

                        Graphics Users: Mostly Graphic Designers using Adobe CS4, some other apps like Sketchup and CAD and GIS tools, that usually print to PDF or use InDesign CS4 for layout.

                        CAD Users: Primarily CAD users using AutoCAD/Microstation for design and plan production. These users do output to 3220's, through PDF or the queue for small format printing.

                        Environmental Scientists: Unique because they typically use a different toolset. Typically use Microsoft Office to produce large reports that may contain many graphics and images. May use Indesign CS4 for layout, but often use PDF as the final output for a report compiled from many Word documents.

                        Everyone else: Admin to corporate support. Everyone prints to the color devices at some point. Typically from MS Office applications, but many times from PDF.

                        We did look at PCL drivers a while back, because we were having a hard time finding up to date Postscript drivers that would support Windows (specifically x64). Like I said, we had mixed results...images looked OK, but a little flat. Color gradations in photos for example looked less dynamic, like the sky in a photo would be pretty much one color instead of changing to different shades. Font rendering seemed different, but not an insurmountable problem. Sheet margins were different, but I thought we could address that in the queue settings. I am not sure if we used PCL 5 or 6, so we may need to revisit this. We don't really have our devices precisely calibrated, most graphics users take a hit or miss approach.

                        At this point it sounds like our options are:
                        1. Look again at PCL, but be prepared to live with its shortcomings.
                        2. Make a modification to the 3220's to remove the installed RIP so we can keep using Postscript.
                        I was hoping that we could maybe bypass the RIP without removing it, or crippling the printer. The RIP on the device has a network cable in, then connects to the Printer through a crossover cable. I thought maybe we could just plug the network directly into the printer...but charm's comments make it sound like this won't work.

                        Any comments on how the quality might compare between running the printer through th RIP vs running without the RIP, if we assume we can use Postscript drivers in both cases?

                        Thanks again for your help!

                        Comment

                        • mrfixit51
                          Lead Service Technician

                          1,000+ Posts
                          • Oct 2008
                          • 1975

                          #13
                          Originally posted by maltobello
                          I was hoping that we could maybe bypass the RIP without removing it, or crippling the printer. The RIP on the device has a network cable in, then connects to the Printer through a crossover cable. I thought maybe we could just plug the network directly into the printer...but charm's comments make it sound like this won't work
                          Another condition that charm did not allude to.. The copier has to have a C bootrom in it to talk to the C1, C2. To print without the C1, C2 requires an N bootrom, that will allow the copier to have network capabilities.
                          "Once a King, always a King, but once a Knight is enough!"

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                          • KenB
                            Geek Extraordinaire

                            2,500+ Posts
                            • Dec 2007
                            • 3944

                            #14
                            While the apps you list technically will support PCL, they scream PostScript, especially InDesign.

                            Like Mrfixit said, you can't simply "bypass" the RIP and send directly to the printer; all the right hardware needs to be in place to facilitate that.

                            Even if you were to go through the pain and $$ of converting to an internal controller, you should know that Canon controllers use an emulated version of PostScript, not the true Adobe version that a Fiery will give you. There are noticeable differences between the two. Like Mrfixit said, this model is not getting, but is long in the tooth. Does it really make business sense to invest a lot of hard earned scratch into dead technology?

                            Also, while the imagePASS C1 and C2 support PCL5, I don't think that they support PCL6, although I'm not totally certain.

                            It's up to you, but please give the GX-200 or GX-100 PostScript drivers at try. It won't cost you anything, and just may work.
                            “I think you should treat good friends like a fine wine. That’s why I keep mine locked up in the basement.” - Tim Hawkins

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                            • maltobello
                              Junior Member
                              • Feb 2010
                              • 5

                              #15

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