Curious behavior of an EPSON L3150 with a brand new iMac

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Curious behavior of an EPSON L3150 with a brand new iMac

Hello all, I just bought and I am starting to use a new iMac M4 running Tahoe. My previous one, which still works well was from 2013 with Catalina. I have 2 EPSON printers a L3150 and a L4160 which were running perfectly with the old iMac. The new one recgnized L4160 and things are OK, but despite downloading from EPSON website the adequate driver for the L3150, this printer scans and do copies well, but when needs to print the device pulls the paper but doesn't print anything.

I was with Apple even accessing my new iMac remotely, doing few tests but situation remains the same. I'll talk with EPSON next Monday, but I was wondering if someone would have any hint or suggestion

Thanks. Paulo

iMac 24″, macOS 26.0

Posted on Nov 1, 2025 1:53 PM

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Answer 1

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Buadhai

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90 points

Nov 2, 2025 2:12 AM in response to Buadhai

I wanted to add a few things. The behavior we've seen on our Epson L360 printer when printing from an M4 MBA is this: Once you send a print job to the printer it seems as if it is going to print. It moves paper down. But then stops. If you look at the print queue it says "Sending data to printer". At first we thought that nothing was being printed. But something was being printed; we just didn't notice because we were using "used" sheets of paper to test the printer. Here's what is printed on ever sheet every time we try to print:

EPSONPrintersXIORemoteCompatiblePrinterEnterCommand1

It's just like that with no spaces between words. I believe that this is a message from cups (the printing system) that is erroneously being sent to the printer as if it were a print job.

If you do a search on that entire phrase you will find several references to it including one from five years ago involving a Mac and an Epson printer. There are also several from Japan that are more than a few years old.

Anyway, it might be useful to remover a few sheets from the print feed to see if any of them have the above phrase.

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Answer 2

Nov 1, 2025 2:22 PM in response to pmonnerat

Epson Ecotank L3150 had a firmware update last year, and has a driver update from a month or so back.

Firmware update is page 101: https://download.epson-europe.com/pub/download/6306/epson630646eu.pdf

I’ll assume all of that has been addressed. Same for the L4160.

This printer seems to lack AirPrint, as well. Which means it is entirely dependent on vendor drivers.

There is another recent report of Apple gathering data from macOSm26 with a non-functioning Epson USB printer:

A Tale of 3 MBAs and a Printer - Apple Community

Whether this is an Apple macOS bug, or an Epson bug, or something weird with the local network?

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Answer 3

Buadhai

Level 1

90 points

Nov 1, 2025 8:05 PM in response to MrHoffman

I'm the one who started the "Tale of 3MBA's and a Printer" thread. At this point the case is in the hands of Apple Engineering who have in their possession many log files and other information. I will post in my original thread if there is anything new. I will also let them know about the OPs situation when I communicate again with Apple. Next time you converse with Apple you might let them know about my case and the fact that it is now with engineering.

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