13x19 borderless on Canon s9000 and 13" high six-sheets long banners on Canon i9100?

Been testing some older wide-bed printers recently, mixing and matching
drivers and capabilities. Plus, I have no desire to make the
ink-mafia/cartel wealthier by buying newer printers that can't be refilled
easily and paying more than the price of platinum for a few drops of their
precious inks. I don't support scam-artists nor pay any attention to their
brain-dead and easily conned minions.

Aside that, back to the issue at hand. I found out that the Canon s9000
printer can use the driver from Canon's i9100 printer.

The s9000 printer driver only allows for borderless printing on these paper
sizes:

A4
A3
Letter (8.5"x11")
4x6

But the i9100 printer driver allows for borderless printing on these paper
sizes:

A4
A3
Letter
11x17
13x19
4x6
5x7

While I've not tested the 13x19 borderless on the s9000 printer when using
the i9100 drivers with it (no paper to test it), the s9000 printer does
borderless 11x17 just fine using the i9100 drivers. I presume the 13x19 and
5x7 will work just as good too on the s9000 printer.

The s9000 printer driver is only supposed to do 2400x1200 resolution, but
the i9100 printer driver is supposed to do 4800x1200. While I can't confirm
it visually, there's a good chance that the s9000 printer will be able to
print at 4800 dpi resolution with the i9100 drivers. Both printers use the
very same print-head after all and this is just a paper-feed issue. I think
you have to turn on the "Image Optimizer" or the "Photo Optimizer Pro" in
the i9100 printer driver to engage the 4800 dpi mode. I'm not sure what
triggers 4800 dpi. Can anyone confirm what settings use 4800 dpi on their
i9100? I only know that one time the print speed on the s9000 became much
slower when using the i9100 printer drivers. I presume it was engaging the
4800 dpi mode from some paper-type or photo enhancement option I was
testing at the time.


Now, considering that the s9000 can use the i9100 printer drivers for
extended borderless printing modes and probably higher resolution, it seems
safe to say that all those disheartened i9100 owners who lamented over not
having banner printing modes in their printers for lengthy high-quality
panoramas can just use the s9000 printer drivers to obtain that on their
i9100 printer.

The s9000 driver claims you can only print in a 6-page banner mode using
plain paper in 8.5x11" size of sheets. But when I select the banner mode on
the s9000 driver it also lets me select the 13x19" paper size. Will it
allow for SIX 13x19" sheets worth of banner for a panorama? Someone with an
i9100 test the s9000 drivers and let us know. I only have an s9000 to test
this all on and I don't care to be wasting my 11x17" photo paper cut to
13"-widths and taping it all together. Someone with an i9100 will have to
test the banner-mode on theirs. Even though you have to select plain paper
for banner mode with the s9000 drivers you're still allowed to go into
custom print options to set the printing mode to highest quality, which is
the same as highest photo resolution. The only caveat will be that (from
what I understand) it won't use the photo-colors when using plain paper
mode. It will limit the color matrix to just CMYK, no photo-cyan and
photo-magenta on your panoramas. Though with a possible breathtaking
panorama 13" high and 114" (9.5 ft.) long I don't think anyone will notice
a few coarser hue transitions when standing back far enough to admire it
all. I'm guessing on that maximum size. The s9000 driver is supposed to
only do six 8.5"x11" sheets worth of panorama. If it's still limited to the
max length of 11" x 6, with a 13" wide paper, that's still an impressive
13"x66" (5.5 ft) pano.

The only incongruity between the s9000 and i9100 drivers so far seems to be
the ink-status monitor. You can't use the one from the i9100 driver to read
the ink levels in the s9000 printer. I presume the converse will also be
true. I even went into the Advanced Print Processor options and tried to
use the s9000 Print Processor with the i9100 driver but trying the i9100
status-monitor on the s9000 printer was still a no-go. That's really no
concern of mine as I've also been testing CIS set-ups which are working
great. Ink-levels (and ignorant measelykite's OEM trollings) be damned, I
care not. Other than that, all functionality of both printers may be had in
both printers just by installing and using the respective drivers with
either printer. Or so I presume. Someone with an i9100 will have to test
the s9000 driver compatibility to be certain. The s9000 printer with i9100
drivers does work great though.

If you are the lucky owner of either printer enjoy your new found
capabilities in each. Extra borderless sizes, more print enhancement
features, higher(?) resolution in the s9000; and 13"-high six-page banner
printing in the i9100 (probably). Go to Canon and start downloading the
optional alternate driver to get more printer features to play with, for
free.

Tested on WinXP SP3.

p.s. The s9000 printer with either driver does some fantastic photo prints.

explorer was inspired to say
Been testing some older wide-bed printers recently, mixing and matching
drivers and capabilities. Plus, I have no desire to make the
ink-mafia/cartel wealthier by buying newer printers that can't be refilled
easily and paying more than the price of platinum for a few drops of their
precious inks. I don't support scam-artists nor pay any attention to their
brain-dead and easily conned minions.

Aside that, back to the issue at hand. I found out that the Canon s9000
printer can use the driver from Canon's i9100 printer.

The s9000 driver claims you can only print in a 6-page banner mode using
plain paper in 8.5x11" size of sheets. But when I select the banner mode on
the s9000 driver it also lets me select the 13x19" paper size. Will it
allow for SIX 13x19" sheets worth of banner for a panorama? Someone with an
i9100 test the s9000 drivers and let us know. I only have an s9000 to test
this all on and I don't care to be wasting my 11x17" photo paper cut to
13"-widths and taping it all together. Someone with an i9100 will have to
test the banner-mode on theirs. Even though you have to select plain paper
for banner mode with the s9000 drivers you're still allowed to go into
custom print options to set the printing mode to highest quality, which is
the same as highest photo resolution. The only caveat will be that (from
what I understand) it won't use the photo-colors when using plain paper
mode. It will limit the color matrix to just CMYK, no photo-cyan and
photo-magenta on your panoramas. Though with a possible breathtaking
panorama 13" high and 114" (9.5 ft.) long I don't think anyone will notice
a few coarser hue transitions when standing back far enough to admire it
all. I'm guessing on that maximum size. The s9000 driver is supposed to
only do six 8.5"x11" sheets worth of panorama. If it's still limited to the
max length of 11" x 6, with a 13" wide paper, that's still an impressive
13"x66" (5.5 ft) pano.

I've used an S9000 for 7 years (since May 2002) and am still very happy
with it. There is (if I am right) one serious problem with your
statements above regarding banner/panorama printing.

On a Win 98SE m/c I could get fantastic panoramas - up to 8ft long (say
8 x A4 long) the limit seemed to the computer memory - they were *very*
big files) using Q-print.

Having moved over to a WIN XP Pro machine, I have been trying to
replicate this and on every one the maximum image size I can print has
been 24" (600mm).

A web search indicated that Canon's 98SE drivers permitted the panoramic
printing, but this was withdrawn for the XP drivers. So I have
reservations whether the i9100 drivers permit hi-quality printing (as
opposed to simple plain paper) banner printing.

If you find otherwise, I shall be very interested.

Thanks for your comments

Mike
--
Michael J Davis

Now with added pictures on http://www.flickr.com/photos/watchman


The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
Dorethea Lange

On Fri, 1 May 2009 11:49:11 +0100, Michael J Davis
wrote:


I've used an S9000 for 7 years (since May 2002) and am still very happy
with it. There is (if I am right) one serious problem with your
statements above regarding banner/panorama printing.

On a Win 98SE m/c I could get fantastic panoramas - up to 8ft long (say
8 x A4 long) the limit seemed to the computer memory - they were *very*
big files) using Q-print.

Having moved over to a WIN XP Pro machine, I have been trying to
replicate this and on every one the maximum image size I can print has
been 24" (600mm).

A web search indicated that Canon's 98SE drivers permitted the panoramic
printing, but this was withdrawn for the XP drivers. So I have
reservations whether the i9100 drivers permit hi-quality printing (as
opposed to simple plain paper) banner printing.

If you find otherwise, I shall be very interested.

Thanks for the info on that Win98 s9000 driver. Downloading it now to keep
all bases covered.

And thanks very much for the clarification and correction. Not having
actually tested the banner-pano mode on it I wrongly assumed that the XP
s9000 drivers would do as they claim in the interface. So from what you are
saying there will be no gain to XP i9100 owners trying out the s9000
drivers to obtain banner-pano printing, unless they run Win98 and use the
s9000 driver.

I presume you are using the last s9000 XP drivers available. The file I
downloaded is "s9000xp161usZ.exe". Version 1.61. Looking at their downloads
just now I see that the Win 2000 driver is named slightly different, no "Z"
on the end. Have you tried those for banner printing? It has the same
version number. Win2000 drivers are often compatible with XP.

I now wonder if I can trick my XP machine into installing those 98 drivers
if needed. XP's compatibility mode has allowed for some strange things to
install and work okay in the past. Sometimes you have to do this by booting
up in "safe mode" first. Then install by tagging the setup file to 98
compatibility mode. All's well when you run the software normally. You can
also sometimes extract the driver installer files to a folder then manually
add a printer from those files. This sometimes overrides an installer's OS
check and block. In really stealthy OS-check installers I've even gone into
the temp files folders to find where the installer extracted everything to,
save a copy of those files to manually install later, then close up the
installer before it deleted its temp files. Should banner-pano printing
become an important issue one day I'm sure I'll try some tactics like this.

Luckily I keep an old laptop around with Win98 on it for those times when I
need some backward compatibility. I used to run a dual-boot machine (98 &
XP) to always have the option at hand but haven't bothered to reconfigure
when I bought a machine with XP already installed on it. Though memory
might be the bottleneck on that machine, going by what you state.

I have some old fan-fold paper laying around from my dot-matrix
tractor-feed days. I really should test some of these banner modes.

On the bright-side you get the advantage of being an s9000 owner. You can
still get the extended borderless modes and the enhanced printing options
(Photo Optimizer Pro and Photo Noise Reduction modes) from the XP i9100
driver. It's like getting the upgraded model for free or buying both
printers for the price of one. Both drivers coexist peacefully on my
machine. When printing I just select the one that will do what I need at
the time.

I have thought of one issue which might be of minor concern when using the
extra i9100's borderless sizes on the s9000 printer. While not certain, but
from reading information in online forums about how to firmware-reset and
clean the waste-ink tank of these printers, I am led to believe that the
i9100 printer is likely to have a hardware change on the waste-ink sponge
that runs just beneath the print-head path. I may be wrong, but I think
there are spots along that sponge where there are extra drains that run
directly down to the waste-ink tank below, where each borderless edge is
over-sprayed. Those extra direct-feeds to the waste-ink tank probably don't
exist on the s9000 printer for the 5", 11" and 13" borderless widths. I
don't think this well be a major issue on the s9000 printer unless you do
massive quantities of prints at those extra borderless sizes. Should
ink-buildup become an issue at those locations on the sponge it just means
a little extra cleaning now and then or flushing those spots with a little
drizzle of water to make the ink run off to the existing drains and into
the tank below. A trade-off I'm more than content to live with IF this will
even be an issue, but something to keep in mind should it ever happen.

I really should test the 5" and 13" borderless sizes on the s9000 to be
100% certain. Again I am assuming that if the 11" borderless worked on the
s9000 then the other sizes will too. I think I need to cut/tape some paper
and try. I really was looking for an i9100 printer at first for the 11"
(and rarely the 13") borderless feature but could only find an s9000 at the
time at a price I was willing to pay. This is what led me to try the i9100
drivers with it. I'm glad now that I didn't get any of the (always more
costly) i9100's that were available or I wouldn't have discovered this. I
also like to occasionally print my own patterned papers for origami. Having
these extra borderless sizes will be a nice advantage without a lot of
mucking about in trimming everything. This s9000 was cheaper and came with
an extra new, still sealed, print-head. I couldn't pass that up. A nearly
new printer and extra print-head (plus many packs of papers) for less than
the price of one new print-head alone. I'm thinking of using that extra
print-head for piezography should that ever become available for these
Canon printers, or use it for high-quality pigment inks. I've read enough
to come to understand that the jet ports on these print-heads are likely
large enough for high-quality pigment inks. I've just never cared for that
really ugly metamerism that happens with pigment inks for photographs.
Waterproof 13"x19" topographic maps and star-charts, however, would be a
huge plus where that ugly metamerism wouldn't even be a concern.

Speaking of piezography, just how difficult would it be to write my own
macro for my graphic editor to divide-up the various color layers into the
required gray tones for each ink-tank? It's probably much simpler than most
people make it out to be. I bet it doesn't even require any special printer
drivers for specific printers. It's done all the time in the editor when
using the channel-mixer for b&w conversions. The author of my favorite
graphics editor is always looking for new features to implement. He is also
always lightning fast on implementing them every time I suggest a new
feature for him to add. I might approach him on this. He might include
piezography printing right in his editor channel-mixer's options. No longer
would that technique be available for just a few select (unwanted clogging
Epson) printers. All printers could then do it with the click of an option
button and a swap-out of inks.

On Fri, 1 May 2009 11:49:11 +0100, Michael J Davis
wrote:

I've used an S9000 for 7 years (since May 2002) and am still very happy
with it. There is (if I am right) one serious problem with your
statements above regarding banner/panorama printing.

On a Win 98SE m/c I could get fantastic panoramas - up to 8ft long (say
8 x A4 long) the limit seemed to the computer memory - they were *very*
big files) using Q-print.

Having moved over to a WIN XP Pro machine, I have been trying to
replicate this and on every one the maximum image size I can print has
been 24" (600mm).

A web search indicated that Canon's 98SE drivers permitted the panoramic
printing, but this was withdrawn for the XP drivers. So I have
reservations whether the i9100 drivers permit hi-quality printing (as
opposed to simple plain paper) banner printing.

If you find otherwise, I shall be very interested.

Thanks for your comments


Quick Update:

Well, this is odd. Follow along ...

I tried to install the Win98 drivers on XP. S9000 Ver.7.31. No go using the
installer's setup.exe. Said it wouldn't work on XP. Then I made the
setup.exe Win98 compatible. (Right click on setup.exe, properties,
compatibility, etc.) It opened and tried to install but then closed up
when I went to actually install it. So I went to manually add a printer by
pointing it to the folder where the driver files were extracted to. I chose
the "CJUS9000.INF" file, presuming the US in the filename referred to the
english version or something. The other file being named "CJRS9000.INF". It
only asked if I wanted to replace the old driver. I chose "no". It made a
duplicate "Canon s9000 (copy 1)" driver which I later renamed to Canon
s9000 Win98.

I tried banner printing using that Win98 driver on my XP machine. I made a
simple, large font, test-text banner about 12 pages long on 8.5" x 11"
fan-fold tractor-feed paper (tractor strips removed).

It printed out just fine. Though there was a problem in my application that
I used to print it. I got some duplication of the image (large font text)
at the page-break boundaries. I would need to fix that by changing to some
custom paper size to get rid of the bottom margin in my application that I
used, or use a different application that was more banner friendly. I'm
sure that other programs that have a banner-mode in them would work just
fine.

The printer also had many false-starts with improper paper-feed when using
such thin and old paper. Feels like old soft newsprint paper, it's so old
and soft it could be used for TP in an emergency. But by pulling it out of
the printer, turning it over, trying a few times and pressing the resume
button each time, it would eventually feed.

The Win98 status-monitor also works, because when I went to print it told
me I had to move the paper-thickness selector to the right (for envelopes).
I didn't bother. The status monitor was spying on my activities and showed
me that I didn't flip that lever, so I HAD TO DO THAT. I reluctantly obeyed
a machine's advice. Then it went to print.

Then I tried using the original s9000 v1.61 XP driver. It too printed out a
banner 12 pages long (11 ft.).

I should have tried all this before installing the Win98 driver, as I now
don't know if it would have worked just fine with the original s9000 driver
for XP or if I needed something from the Win98 driver that overwrote
something.

In any case, banners work just fine on XP here. And can be printed out much
much longer than any documentation or driver interface claim. Does anyone
have about 200 ft. of Pro Photo Ultra-glossy 13" wide roll paper that they
want to donate for testing purposes? :-) 13" high 20 ft. long panoramas
anyone? This s9000 (or i9100) printer just might be the ultimate printer
for anyone to ever own. Add a continuous-ink-system and you're all set.

Try installing the Win98 driver on XP as I did. See if that fixes your
problem. Or it might just be that the latest s9000 v1.61 XP driver works
this way.

It looks like XP i9100 owners might also be back in the banner-pano
business after-all, if they too try the s9000 drivers.

[Excuse top-post]

Just got in after a few days away and seen your two posts. Wow! That is
interesting!! Thanks for your investigation!

Can you e-mail me directly (the e-mail 'reply to' works!) and we'll take
this detailed discussion off-line - but will post final conclusions
here, if anyone else is interested!!

I need a few days to check it all out, though - BUT I do have 10M of 13"
wide roll paper!

Mike

explorer Was inspired to say
On Fri, 1 May 2009 11:49:11 +0100, Michael J Davis
wrote:

I've used an S9000 for 7 years (since May 2002) and am still very happy
with it. There is (if I am right) one serious problem with your
statements above regarding banner/panorama printing.

On a Win 98SE m/c I could get fantastic panoramas - up to 8ft long (say
8 x A4 long) the limit seemed to the computer memory - they were *very*
big files) using Q-print.

Having moved over to a WIN XP Pro machine, I have been trying to
replicate this and on every one the maximum image size I can print has
been 24" (600mm).

A web search indicated that Canon's 98SE drivers permitted the panoramic
printing, but this was withdrawn for the XP drivers. So I have
reservations whether the i9100 drivers permit hi-quality printing (as
opposed to simple plain paper) banner printing.

If you find otherwise, I shall be very interested.

Thanks for your comments


Quick Update:

Well, this is odd. Follow along ...

I tried to install the Win98 drivers on XP. S9000 Ver.7.31. No go using the
installer's setup.exe. Said it wouldn't work on XP. Then I made the
setup.exe Win98 compatible. (Right click on setup.exe, properties,
compatibility, etc.) It opened and tried to install but then closed up
when I went to actually install it. So I went to manually add a printer by
pointing it to the folder where the driver files were extracted to. I chose
the "CJUS9000.INF" file, presuming the US in the filename referred to the
english version or something. The other file being named "CJRS9000.INF". It
only asked if I wanted to replace the old driver. I chose "no". It made a
duplicate "Canon s9000 (copy 1)" driver which I later renamed to Canon
s9000 Win98.

I tried banner printing using that Win98 driver on my XP machine. I made a
simple, large font, test-text banner about 12 pages long on 8.5" x 11"
fan-fold tractor-feed paper (tractor strips removed).

It printed out just fine. Though there was a problem in my application that
I used to print it. I got some duplication of the image (large font text)
at the page-break boundaries. I would need to fix that by changing to some
custom paper size to get rid of the bottom margin in my application that I
used, or use a different application that was more banner friendly. I'm
sure that other programs that have a banner-mode in them would work just
fine.

The printer also had many false-starts with improper paper-feed when using
such thin and old paper. Feels like old soft newsprint paper, it's so old
and soft it could be used for TP in an emergency. But by pulling it out of
the printer, turning it over, trying a few times and pressing the resume
button each time, it would eventually feed.

The Win98 status-monitor also works, because when I went to print it told
me I had to move the paper-thickness selector to the right (for envelopes).
I didn't bother. The status monitor was spying on my activities and showed
me that I didn't flip that lever, so I HAD TO DO THAT. I reluctantly obeyed
a machine's advice. Then it went to print.

Then I tried using the original s9000 v1.61 XP driver. It too printed out a
banner 12 pages long (11 ft.).

I should have tried all this before installing the Win98 driver, as I now
don't know if it would have worked just fine with the original s9000 driver
for XP or if I needed something from the Win98 driver that overwrote
something.

In any case, banners work just fine on XP here. And can be printed out much
much longer than any documentation or driver interface claim. Does anyone
have about 200 ft. of Pro Photo Ultra-glossy 13" wide roll paper that they
want to donate for testing purposes? :-) 13" high 20 ft. long panoramas
anyone? This s9000 (or i9100) printer just might be the ultimate printer
for anyone to ever own. Add a continuous-ink-system and you're all set.

Try installing the Win98 driver on XP as I did. See if that fixes your
problem. Or it might just be that the latest s9000 v1.61 XP driver works
this way.

It looks like XP i9100 owners might also be back in the banner-pano
business after-all, if they too try the s9000 drivers.


Mike

--
Michael J Davis
Please note that the Reply-To: address will remain in use for at least 30
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