IR105-M1 Postscript Drivers for Win 7

[pmailfl]

I've searched the canon site under Ir105 & ImagePass M1 and can only find PCL drivers.

I have the PS driver for XP, but it won't install under Win7 (either 32 or 64bit), can't share the printer, and doing the Windows Policy editor trick to disable kernal mode drivers doesn't work either.

Are there PS M1 drivers anywhere for Windows7? I found them for the IR105, but it won't work. I need the M1 drivers, unless someone can tell me how to hook my 105 up to the network without the RIP controller.

Thanks

[charm5496]

There will never be Win7 drivers for the M1 Image Pass. Fiery and Canon are not going to invenst the time an money to produce them.
In order to connect the machine directly and not use the M1 you are going to need a 'N' boot rom along with the proper firmware for the machine. Not a difficult thing to do if you have the training, but if you are just a user of the device I would pay someone to take care of this for you.

[pmailfl]

Ack. That's what I was afraid of. For now, I have an old box running XP for the sole purpose of being able to print PS from PrintShop Mail to the M1, but it is a PITA.

Perhaps next time I need a service call I'll ask the tech about removing the M1, but from your response, it doesn't seem like a simple Set the INT-CONT value to 0 and you can go back and forth between the two.

What am I going to sacrifice by giving up the M1 and printing straight to the 105? I've only used the machine through the controller.

[charm5496]

The M1 does give you true postscript, but that is about it IMO. The M1 was old and slow, not much memory and the image quality wasn't much improved over the internal print board. You might lose a little bit of performance when printing variable data and maybe some image quality if you print a lot of screen shots with gradations on them. You may want to inform the tech before hand so he knows what you want to accomplish and can get the N boot rom and firmware ahead of time. make sure you work out a price for everything as well. I wouldn't pay much more than $200 plus labor for it.

[pmailfl]

Most of my printing is text, and a lot of it through Word Mail Merge via the PCL driver on my Win7 machine. I use PS Mail for the complex jobs Word can't do, but that will only send postscript.

What I'm mainly concerned about are the large jobs I send, sometimes over 200megs with variable data. Is going straight to the printer going to cause the job to run much slower, or even crap out? Even with the M1, it takes some time now before it finishes ripping and starts printing.

On mainly text, how will the image quality compare?

Next question -- Are there Win 7 PS drivers for the 7105 controllers? If so, I may just leave things as is, since I will probably be upgrading the 105 soon (I keep saying that every time it gives me headaches, but 14 million copies later, I still haven't pulled the trigger).

[charm5496]

there are win 7 drivers for both 32 and 64 bit on both the S1 and S2 image pass series.

you would not see much if any difference on the 105 between internal and the M1 on text.

after 14 million you either have to get ready to invest a bunch of money to keep the 105 running or spend that money on some new equipment. I would buy the 7105 personally.