Epson 9600-try to resurrect or buy new Epson printer?

[jhanley108]

I have the workhorse Epson Stylus Proo 9600 and it's failing after almost 17 yrs. I need a pump cap assembly and new printer head, which I have found on the internet for about $300. Adobe Color Utility is not working either. Ink is getting hard to find at times, parts etc. However, with OS Catalina my prompts for the printer have changed and cannot switch between B/W and Color. Do I bite the bullet and get a new printer or try and resurrect my old friend?
It's been a great printer and until now never had an issue. also-is the Epson SureColor 8000 comparable? Canon?
Thanks
John

 

[VA1DER]

The Epson Stylus Pro 9600 was indeed a workhorse, and one of those rare instances where marketing goals and engineering goals pushed the same direction to make an outstanding product. I would still consider myself a net fan when it comes to Epson, but lately their marketing strategies have seemed to be at odds with the principles of good engineering and that is straining my opinion of them.

I can't speak much toward the driver issue with MacOS. I see that both the Pro 9600 and SureColour 8000 are ESC-P/Raster printers. Back when ESC-P was invented for impact printers, everyone duplicated it. But nowadays, only Epson used ESC-P so whatever Epson provides Apple is what you have to work with. Epson likes it that way - they are rather allergic to PCL and Postscript because it opens up other driver avenues besides them. If later MacOS drivers are limiting functionality this may be Epson's own influence at work. They have been rather aggressive in recent years using driver features and other soft means to limit access to printer capabilities that the printer hardware otherwise would have no trouble doing.

That 9600 is a special printer, if you can get past the driver issues then my personal instinct would be to keep it running as long as possible.