HP Laserjet 5000 Mavericks

You ask, "have you cotacted HP fro an updated driver?"

I'll just pretend that I don't see your grossly misspelled simple words in only one sentence, but yes I forgot to mention the obvious.

I wouldn't be posting such a request here if I hadn't already exhausted (and it was indeed exhausting) all common avenues towards a solution, including countless hours and days with HP tech support and Apple Support — Apple Support because all HP drivers are now downloadable through Apple Software Update.

Thank you for making me jump.

Thank you for the suggestion, and at this point I'm willing to try anything. However, browsing through their site I cannot find any mention of benefit (or functionality) in Mac OS 10.9 Mavericks. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Thank you for that wonderful gesture.

I've actually heard of GIMP printing before. Unfortunately, the issues here seem to be some fancy stuff that Apple has loaded into Mavericks. If Gutenprint can catch up to it in time, it'll save some of us a lot of headache (and money).

So currently my strategy is to wait.

"Fancy stuff" is my opinon after some lengthy, in-depth, nitpicking trouble-shooting with a sharp senior Apple tech advisor who used screen share on me. We tried to force-use one of the printer drivers she found.

Unfortunately, my frame of reference is also from skipping 10.8 entirely. I had everything printing fine in Mac OS 10.7.5, so the portrait and landscape modes in 10.9 seem rather automatic, as in Preview's Auto Rotate, which is not working properly with my Laserjet 5000. Nor is similar landscape mode printing from another app, namely Vectorworks.

Problem is perhaps coupled with the Laserjet 5000's state of the art, which is probably circa late 90's. Although it's a powerhouse printer with a fast ethernet connection, there seems no download path into the machine. Perhaps it needs firmware, but HP has none for it and they don't want to support it any longer because they want to make more money from people like me.

So the pinpoint problem could just be some little software thing that the printer needs in order to recognize something in these new apps that it didn't need to recognize before.

By the way, this Laserjet 5000 model is fully supported with drivers for Windows 8.

Go figure.

I had my hopes up that today's software update (HP Printer Software Update v.2.16.1, http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3669) would fix it.

But no.

Problem persists.

The Laserjet 5000 is a robust printer that can print up to 12.4"x18.4" paper, which is just a bit larger than tabloid (11x17). This is the size that messes up in landscape mode. In Preview, rotating to landscape for printing still crashes the printer. Same crash. In Vectorworks, landscape prints in portrait mode.

Can this detail possiblly get to Apple engineers?

I've already sent the feedback report after talking to Apple Tech.

Thx for trying to help. Or at least suggesting to look at yours.

The question of "what driver am I using?" is, in fact, the core of the problem. Allow me to explain again.

I cannot see ANY printer regardless of how thoroughly we reset the printing system, recheck for updates, trash the com.apple.printer prefs, run disk utilities, reboot, etc.

There's no pre-populated list of makes and models of printers (drivers) from which to choose, anywhere. Yes it's properly connected in a wired network.

The only way to "see" the printer is to call up its local IP address. In the process of doing so, the little pop-up menu in the Sys Pref Printer Add via IP correctly shows the Jetdirect network interface. HP Jetdirect is physically installed inside the LJ5000. It takes in the ethernet cable. So at least THAT little menu is properly populated with the correct device. (So I wonder how it's able to find THAT)

This is the only way to get basic printing functions. It does so with a generic postscript printer icon. Can we call it "no printer driver" yet? But wait...

Apple tech (the first one) gave me a standalone HP driver installer (v.2.16.1), which, at the beginning, seemed to provide no help, not populating anything anywhere with any drivers. Blank fields. Is Mavericks so smart as to need no extra baggage? That was my thought. It did not recognize any HP Laserjet 5000. Or any Laserjet. Or any HP or any printer whatsoever!

Except, that somehow, maybe inthe process of trying to install something, the correct LJ5000 icon replaced the generic postscript icon. It's nicely identical to the one in OS 10.7, this icon. So there was SOME progress.

However, it ultimately proved to have absolutely no printing improvement still. It's the same basic letter size, and that's it. Anything fancy is either unavailable, messed up, or crashes the printer.

Even resetting again everything in Sys Prefs and all those iterations jumping through all those hoops produced no HP LJ5000 driver appearing anywhere.

So essentially, it seems we had successfully installed only the correct printer icon!?! Functionality is same as generic IP printer.

Or is some kind of visible LJ5000 item supposed to appear somewhere to see/ read/ pick? But where?

There's none.

That's the problem.

I want to think that this is maybe all an OS problem instead of a printer driver problem. It's much easier to point the finger at HP though.