everything that I am
Tue Nov 10 21:05:25 2009
Instructions on how to get Dell 1320c color laser printer to work in Ubuntu
This article describes how I got Dell 1320c color laser printer to work in my Ubuntu. At the time of this writing, Dell is not planning to write driver for this printer, as per tech support. If you know a better way, just drop me a line.
Two years ago I blasted a load of cash on some Dell crapolio hardware that included a laptop, some bling-bling and a Dell 1320c Color Laser printer that I got with a discount. I was dumb enough to not check whether it worked in Ubuntu.... and it didn't.
I had quite a few unsuccessfull tries of getting it to work until I officially gave up. Considering that I print once in a blue moon, my solution was a separate Win2k box on the network to which I'd copy the files I needed to print and printed off of it. Like a true bachelor, I am short on furniture and the printer resided on top of the box it came in... right near the wall of computers that I rarely used:
When I built my new 8GB RAM, Quad Core AMD Phenom boxen (effectively rendering my lappy useless), the "computer wall" started to get on my nerves and I threw away boxes I didn't use anymore. I was left with my new box, a lappy, and an ugly-looking Win2k box for my printing. I really wanted to get rid of it, so (being slightly drunk) decided to call Dell and give them shit. After being transfered to the THIRD person and sitting on hold for about 20 minutes I finally got my answer: "I am trully sorry but we do not have the driver". After telling them off that they sell Ubuntu boxes yet do not provide any drivers I got about 50 more apologies until I hung up and went off to Google in hopes that some genius came up with something for my printer... and a miracle happened!
I ran into a forum thread that claimed that my precious printer will work with Fuji Xerox Docuprint C525 driver. Fuji's site only offered a 32-bit RPM, which you can download and convert into .deb yourself if you really want to.
Unfortunately, I had an amd64 system and alien command refused to convert it into a DEB package. I asked someone online to do that for me. Result: a 32-bit DEB package for the Fuji driver.
Printer now works quite good, I'd even say better than in Windows (and my cat is trying to hump it as I write this article)
Wed Aug 4 05:16:51 2010
Thanks Mr Awesome!
The name says it all! 10.04 and a Dell printer. All working.
Fri Jul 23 09:07:06 2010
Thank you very much.
Very usefull for me :)
Sat Jul 10 08:19:00 2010
Update: Put it on the network and it found it at 192.168.1.100 (maybe 101) anyway it worked. Two of the other boxes run XP and the pastor has the Ubuntu and I copied bliss for the desktop to make him feel comfortable. Again thank you for doing this. On a side not I got rid of this box that I made EP45T that I had trouble getting MacOS on it; all kinds of kernel panics. I have two that work fine. So I will get another EP45UD3R that is identical.
Ciao,
Lou Cioccio
Thu Jul 8 16:21:28 2010
Thanks I was able to do it both USB and on the network; but had trouble with the Linksys usb print server. I just received the network adaptor for the printer and will try that later today.
Your instructions were very clear. I am installing this computer in our previous pastor church as a replacement but instead of WinXP I put Ubuntu on it. His particular church does not use a dedicated windows software (PDS) for census and giving they just a spread sheet.
Again thank you.
Thu May 27 15:22:34 2010
I was able to increase the input file size by folling http://p-s.co.nz/wordpress/?p=227 or using socket and setting Port9100 timeout to a higher value (in the printer's print server web setup console).
The problem remains: The filter queue is slow and eats CPU time. Time to get a turbo boost enabled multi core CPU ;-). Has anyone found out what is the GPL'ed part of the driver and how to obtain the sources?
Thu May 27 12:50:29 2010
This worked great with 64 Bit Ubuntu 10.04. My selection screens are not exactly like yours and I had to change the default paper source. When I printed the test page, it worked very well and the color is great. I had almost given up on Linux but now I may be a believer. Thanks for your work and information.
Thu May 27 04:06:00 2010
Thanks for this post. Works basically for me with Ubuntu 9.10 AMD64 and 10.4 i386.
There is one issue: When printing colored bitmaps (photos etc.) with resolutions equal or higher than approx. 1100x1467 the processes 'FXM_PF' and 'socket' eat 100% CPU and... nothing else 'happens'. cups' error_log contains a 'Set job-printer-state-message to "Unable to write print data: Broken pipe", current level=ERROR'.
When scaling the input image down to 1024x1366 everything is fine. Output size does not matter.
A gray image is printed until size exceeds approx. 1600x2134.
Has anyone had issues like this?
Wed May 19 07:41:54 2010
thx its works ! but i have to use this URl : usb://Dell/Color%20Laser%201320c
i'm on mint isadora 64x
u can use FX DocuPrint C525 A-AP is u dont have PPD file
Mon May 3 03:58:30 2010
Thanks a lot for your guide! Worked instantly perfect, only thing that had manually to be changed was the paper source that in my case was set at bypass by default.
Really good work!
Tue Apr 13 16:05:21 2010
Great stuff, it worked at once on my ubuntu 9.10/64. To my knowledge, there are no drivers for the Dell 1320c provided by Dell nor the Ubuntu community. Previous tries to select another printer from the build-in lists (Xerox, Dell) failed. Thanks very much !
Sun Feb 21 08:44:07 2010
I have nothing to suggest. I have the most recently updated Ubuntu 9.10, and printer works just fine. Perhaps you're missing some CUPS packages?
Sun Feb 21 00:07:54 2010
I have this same problem with lsusb not seeing the Dell 1320c. Found this bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cups/+bug/519690 which suggests problem might be due to malformed output from /usr/lib/cups/backend/usb. Tried renaming /usr/lib/cups/backend/usb to usb.orig and replacing it with a one liner that cleaned up the bad syntax:
#!/bin/sh
/usr/lib/cups/backend/usb.orig | perl -0777 -pe 's/;STS:AAA[^"]*DA==//'
Now seem to get sensible output from sudo /usr/lib/cups/backend/usb
but clicking "New" in printer configuration still does not detect my USB-connected Dell 1320c printer.
Not sure what to do next. Hints?
Fri Feb 19 17:21:19 2010
I have the same problem as Jeremy above, and get the same error. lsusb does not see the Dell, but when I do sudo lsusb it sees it. Maybe you can help us or point us in the right direction. Thanks
Sun Jan 24 20:31:15 2010
To install on Ubuntu 9.10:
- Download the above mentioned .deb file for the Fuji Xerox printer.
- Install the deb file.
- Install new printer and choose FX and later provide the path to the file /usr/share/cups/model/FujiXerox/en/FX_DocuPrint_C525_A_AP.ppd
- Choose the above shown configurations.
Sun Dec 20 12:03:44 2009
Yey \o/
Sun Dec 20 11:45:53 2009
You are some kind of wizard... it must be magic... a printer that works first time... in Linux... with cups !
You are now officially my hero !
Tue Dec 15 05:06:05 2009
Dude thanks for this excellent tutorial. Just made my day, IT-wise that is.
Tue Dec 8 17:56:20 2009
Just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to post this up. I was having the same issue printing from an Ubuntu machine to a shared Windows Dell 1320c and this sorted it right out for me with minimum hassle.
Sat Nov 21 09:23:24 2009
I really have no idea, I hook up my printer via USB, so there's no URL that I enter...
Fri Nov 20 23:39:09 2009
Hey man, I have had the same issue forever now and it is absolutely driving me nuts to copy whatever I want printed over to my windows partition, reboot into windows, then finally print. Thats a great tutorial, but I have an issue and thought maybe you could point me in the right direction..
(btw I am using an Intel I7 920 with amd64 ubuntu 9.10 gnome)
I had the same issue with ubuntu 9.04, when I try to add the printer under admin, printing, new printer it doesn't see any printers at all, just like you said. But when I try to point to the .ppd file, I click on other and my only option is to "enter device url", there I put localhost:, then navigate to my .ppd file under /usr/share/cups/blah/blah". I then set the mem cap to 64mb, and tray to 250 sheets. I keep printer description as default, but when I click next it gives me a CUPS server error, "There was an error during the CUPS installation: "client-error-not-possible".
I really appreciate any feedback you might be able to give. I never ask for help online, and in fact this is the 1st time I have ever. This printer is really driving me nuts though. Thanks again!
Jeremy
My latest book out of many to come: "Mind Power: How to Change Reality in Your Favor"
I am awesome!