How to use manufacturer's printer driver?

[dfgrbac]

I just successfully installed Mandriva LE 2005 after solving a problem with the installation CDs. Now my problem is the printer driver.

 

My printer, an Epson CX5400 3 in 1 page image printer, was recognized and configured automatically very nicely. The problem is that it is printing in line mode rather than page image mode which is 3 times faster. Epson provides linux drivers at their Avasys Download Service for Linux [www.avasys.jp/english/linux_e/index.html]. They have a specific driver (rpm) for Mandriva which I downloaded and installed.

 

I tried to activate this new driver with the Mandrakelinux Control Center. The driver is called an scx5300_5400s driver which seems to appear in the list of Epson drivers, but when selected the test print does not work nor does it print if configured. If I press the "use manufacturer's driver" button, it says the ppd does not conform to ppd format. The new driver can also be selected with the KDE Control Center which interfaces to the root configuration (it asks for the root password). This KDE interface has the new driver in its list and identifies it as a page image driver. I even successfully printed a test page and it printed in page image mode. The only difference was that the color wheel and radial lines were not perfectly round as they are in the recommended driver. But I could not activate this driver permanently. The KDE interface got a couple of error dialogs saying the configuration procedure failed.

 

The only way I can get the printer to work reliably is to use the default recommended driver which prints in line mode. Another strange thing is that when something prints, the active light on the printer goes on - and never goes off as it should when the print is done. In my old SuSE system, the printer worked normally with the downloaded driver in page mode nicely.

 

Can anyone help me use the new driver?