Driver for Dell 5110cn printer on Lion

Question

Driver for Dell 5110cn printer on Lion

I'm looking for a printer driver that will install and function on a Lion 10.7.3 system. The printer is a Dell 5110cn color laser printer that was end-of-lifed in 2008, and Dell is "slow" to support printers that aren't current. The Dell installer that is available will not run without Rosetta. (Maybe the drivers work OK under Lion, but how do you install them without using the Installer?)

Dell Support suggested I try Xerox drivers for their sister model, since Xerox has updated their drivers for Lion. I have installed those drivers, but find that duplexing and paper feed from the multipurpose tray are not supported. I've tried the Phaser 6300DN and the 6360DN drivers installed by the Xerox installer: neither seems to support duplexing or the multipurpose tray, i.e., one may select those options in the print dialog box, but the printer will respond by printing on only one side of the paper that's pulled from the tray bin. Happily, it does print in color!

Does anyone have any insight or solutions for this issue? Thanks.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)

Posted on Mar 22, 2012 2:40 PM

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Answer 1

PAHU

Level 6

16,723 points

Mar 22, 2012 4:26 PM in response to sticky moments

I can understand the tray call not working, as they often differ for each vendor. But duplexing is often the same call for all devices, so it is odd that this is not working.

What you can do is compare PPDs between the Dell and the Xerox. If the Dell is not installed on a previous system then hopfully you can take the old driver package apart and extract the PPD. If you cannot get the PPD then let me know and I can install on my 10.6 test Mac and get the PPD.

With the PPD open you will see an entry similar to the following;

*OpenGroup: Finishing/Finishing

*OpenUI *Duplex/Duplex: PickOne

*OrderDependency: 50.0 AnySetup *Duplex

*DefaultDuplex: DuplexNoTumble

*Duplex None/Off: "<</Duplex false /Tumble false>> systemdict /setpagedevice get exec"

*Duplex DuplexNoTumble/Long edge: "<</Duplex true /Tumble false>> systemdict /setpagedevice get exec"

*Duplex DuplexTumble/Short edge: "<</Duplex true /Tumble true>> systemdict /setpagedevice get exec"

*CloseUI: *Duplex

If you compare the Duplex entry in the Dell to that used by the Xerox then you may see what each printer uses.

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Answer 2

FevLad

Level 1

11 points

Mar 30, 2012 10:34 AM in response to sticky moments

Hi I have this problem too. I'm running Lion and cannot print to my Dell 5110cn. I have installed the drivers as per this link: http://www.cpierce.org/2011/07/getting-dell-5100cn-to-work-with-os-x-lion/

Although I can now see the printer on my Mac and I can even see it's ink levelson the 5110cn etc via my Mac whenever I print to the Dell it just says the printer is 'busy'.

I'm running Parallels and can print to the Dell from my virtual PC okay. In addition, other network PC's can print to it .. just not my Mac. I can also print to another Dell printer on the network but that is b/w. I need colour.

Could it be a printer firmware issue? If so, how do I upgrade that via a Mac?

Any help appreciated.

FevLad

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Answer 3

Apr 10, 2012 3:36 PM in response to FevLad

Sorries all around for lapsing into silence on this topic; I was pulled from this task and given others. I forwarded the link in the previous post (i.e., http://www.cpierce.org/2011/07/getting-dell-5100cn-to-work-with-os-x-lion/) to the guy who inherited my problem and he now reports the 5100cn installer package from "Jeff" in that link has the Dell 5110cn in our office functional under OS X 10.7 Lion. Both the paper feed (from the multipurpose tray) and the duplex issues are resolved when using the Dell 5100cn driver that "Jeff" packaged. Thanks to FevLad for that contribution, and to PAHU for his post. I never did get around to comparing the PPDs per his suggestion. Next up is the networked Canon imageRunner 330-400. Another topic.

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Answer 4

PAHU

Level 6

16,723 points

Apr 10, 2012 3:44 PM in response to sticky moments

sticky moments wrote:

Next up is the networked Canon imageRunner 330-400. Another topic.

Just a heads up regarding this old model. The print controller is a Fiery and supports Postscript only, so use the Generic PS driver included with Lion. And for the LPD print queue, you must enter a queue name of print and it must be in lower case.

Good luck.

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