Epson 3880 and Ventura

Hi NevadaNorth,

Great that you have found a driver version that works with Ventura. You say, "give that a try" and "hope it works for you", but you don't say what version it is!

Can you tell us, please?

Thanks

Stephen

I have a Macbook Pro 16 M1 Max running venture that is now incapable of printing to the EpsonStylus Pro 3880.

It seems to see it, and says it is printing, but it stalls right at the start of the progress bar and says:

"Waiting for the printer to become available". Is that the same as you are getting?

I was setting up a new M1 iMac for a client with a 3880. The iMac did not like being connected through a USB C adapter. In order to use the adapter and get the printer to print we had to connect via ethernet. Everything is fine now and it is printing like it used to on the old Intel Mac.

Well, having failed with a direct connection using an Apple USB-C to A adapter when trying to print my Xmas cards, and having to switch back to and old Mac to print, I saw your post.

I tried via ethernet, it installs the printer as TCPIP but fails to then communicate, saying "Communiction Error". Also the utility fails to show ink levels etc, so is also not communicating.

I then downloaded the Epson_Uninstaller_132.dmg, thinking perhaps something corrupt might have been left behind, ran that to uninstall printers. re-installed as ethernet, it failed again.

Then re-connected and reinstalled a directly connected, again using the same Apple USB-C to A adaptor. Weird, it now works. So what you suggested helped, but not how it was supposed to!

The other thing I tried to do was to update the firmware, but the Epson package to do that seems too old to even run on Ventura, so another fail.

Just as an asside, I find my 3880 now struggles with endless paper feed errors from the sheet feeder(about 1 in 10 works "unaided"), I've found that just pressing slightly on the middle of the sheet of paper as it does the "take-up" routine makes it work. Hope that might help someone else.

Too funny! Well, I'm glad you at least got it to work. I should say, we did have to call Epson to get the Ethernet working properly. Sorry about the paper feed errors we did not encounter that problem.

I purchased a new M1 Studio in Dec. I'm on Monterey with an Epson Stylus 9890,a printer that's in the same family as the 3880 above, and uses the same driver. I too had the problem of "waiting for printer to connect," but after uninstall/reinstall driver and firmware, I got it to connect via ethernet.

However, a much larger problem has presented itself: I'm no longer able to print on "custom sheet sizes" when using roll paper. AFTER the machine rolls out a foot of expensive paper, the image comes out rotated and randomly placed on the paper, continuing off the edge, and not scaled correctly.

The printer itself is functioning perfectly, and on High Sierra custom sizes print correctly.

Epson is very responsive to my support tickets, but have failed to solve the problem. A friend who's an Epson product manager on a different printer said I should keep my old Trashcan alive for printing, or switch to Windows. After spending $2K on a new machine, I'd like to avoid that.

I too would love to know which driver @NevadaNorth used to solve their issue so I could give it a try.

have you tried their latest driver for that model? SPT_CA61201-VM | Epson Stylus Pro 3880 | Epson Stylus Pro Series | Professional Imaging Printers | Printers | Support | Epson US

P.S. with the same Epson driver (latest 12.62) it prints fine - albeit with many paper error misfeeds - from Mac OS 10.15.7 Catalina on a MacBook Pro 15-inch early 2013 model.

Impossible to get Ventura and Epson 3880 to work together.