So, has anyone here got two Seikos? Connected to one computer maybe? One SCSI card or two?
Btw, what's the recommended SCSI card for ColorPainter? Seems like they all should work, but actually... until i had one machine, there was no problem. Now that i've got two, the RIP sees two machines, but actually sees only one (sees both but if i select Print on either of the machines, only one prints).
Plus, when i boot my PC up, the Colorpainter is found on the ID that i select, but on BUS number 8. Which sucks, cuz my RIP only handles BUS numbers from 0 to 3. So whenever i select 0 or whatever, it doesn't see the machine. But when i select "autoselect" then it prints fine...
SCSI really confuses me... I think it really sucks that Seiko has decided to launch their machines with this kind of interface...
i believe the head pausing was not because of the 29160 but because of the rip or the pc that the rip was running on. it happened using PhotoPrint, not with Caldera - no such problems. But yes Caldera has some problems with the SCSI settings and additionally, the serial SCSI connection is very fragile.
We use two seiko and two PC, + an hp printer with caldera. Each seiko has it own pc and scsi card, but we manage the jobs only on one computer, the second computer only calculate and transmit the jobs to the second seiko. No problem so far even with very large printing 20m banners for example. But the scsi cable is very fragile and you need to secure it, never walk on it! Have you perform a reprint calculation before printing?
thomas, i believe that running two seikos on one pc with caldera is just too risky. We do it now and you would get weird results like, you are running one work 1 on Machine 1 and you launch work 2 on Machine 2. Machine 2 does not seem to respond and Machine 1 stops in the middle of work 1 and staarts printing work 2.
The SCSI settings in caldera suck - you cannot enter the proper SCSI Bus number. When there are two SCSI cards it doesn't work either. Maybe i need an older type of SCSI card where the Bus Number is limited to 0-3, cuz that's what Caldera can have.
"Luckily" now, our Seiko 1 is broken, so we just run Seiko 2.
Just buy a second pc, connect the pcs together via an ethernet cable. You will be able to prepare all your job on the first one. Do you have a licence to drive two machine or more with caldera?
oops... i really don't think i follow You :) Help me, Thomas :)
so, you have one Caldera installed on each computer? what if i have only one USB Dongle? and how do you install the second pc/machine on the first one? you enter "Ethernet" instead of "SCSI"? :)
and yes, i have had the upgrade key file installed to run two machines on one Caldera.
might be able to help here. you can run the main caldera software on a pc and just install satellite pc's for extra processing power. yes you will need to activate the two printer option via your dongle, but you should be able to configure caldera to do this real easy. more of a workflow than a standard rip set-up. think of the 2nd pc as a turbo giving you extra power when you need it.
You don't need a second dongle, in configure select the seiko and enter the second seiko ip adress instead of localhost wich is your main rip. Caldera will work on demo mode on the second pc, but you don't care because you just need the spooler fonction. Hope it helps... You will need also to create a patch set of your profiles, your personalise rolls and install it on the new seiko, really easy. It's better if you first switch on the second pc (slave one) before the first one.
they give you linux with that, but you can use any other linux too.
and don't worry about linux - you won't have to know it. caldera opens up automatically and all you have to learn is how to switch off the computer.
ok, you might have to ask the installing guy to set up samba server so that your linux computer is seen within Microsoft Windows Network. so that's the only thing.
in my opinion the PhotoPrint is a RIP much easier and friendlier than Onyx. I like it a lot. Caldera seems simpler at first sight, but then there is a bit steeper learning curve down the road = you really need to read the manual, while with PhotoPrint you don't even need to.
but, answering your questions: 1) how long? Caldera four months, PhotoPrint two years now, Onyx even more - this is my experience with RIPs
2) Caldera is stable as hell. Come on, just a couple of years ago there was an actual Caldera linux :) I was taught linux at school on Caldera ;)
3) No problem with Windows Network - any book or webhelp on Samba server (SMB) will guide you in easy steps how to set up the service. It's actually very stable.
4) For compatibility list check www.caldera.fr - i believe HP is included, but... i won't bet on that.
5) Only availalble version now is 7, in general, and i think 7.4 is current? or 7.04, something like that.
I'm using caldera since 4 years now, i've drove HP, seiko, xerox printer without any problems. There is a lot of cool stuff you can do with caldera like :
- you can change a single color or several colors on the fly in a multi pages pdf or ps files, youd don't need to come back in illustrator or ask your client an other files if it's a pdf. Imagine if you have a 20 pages pdf with two different black in the images and the vectors elements, really easy to fix it. - You can add your own crops or sign marks very quickly, like for example if you need to cut 10cm after the image to add accessory on a 15m banner, just add it in the composer and the person who will cut it won't have to mesure or think to anything. You can add almost any crops or images you want in the composer like you would have done in indesign. - you can create some ready to use tilling tool, you want to create a 4x3m poster in 8 tiles, just drop the .ps in the tilling tools, push create. It's done! You've got 8 new different images that you can print in what ever order you want. - You can cut a pdf and take off the crops - a lot of cool stuff you need to discover... - very, very fast ans stable, not only rip but also previews
The bad : The staff will need to learn it, like they 've learned photoshop. It's very powerfull vith a lot of options. If you play with and you don't know what you are doing, it can't be a disaster. For example if one of your staff is playing with the color boosting tool and forget to unable it, you can print meters and meters with the bad colors.
thomas, how have you been running your caldera system? have been using one main system and utilises other pc's as processing power, or as satellite workstations?
Processing power for the moment, but we 'll maybe have to think to a mix set up, we have so many small work that one person is sometimes not enough to prepare the files and feed the 3 machine non stop, despite the fact that we are printing 20/24h
If you're are printing large or big series of poster with pdf ready to print, not so much complicate, one person is far enough for 3-4 machines. But if you are changing the media every 15-30 minutes and need at the same time to prepare files then one person would need a bit of help.
I think the machine should never stop, if it's stopped because the spooler is empty thats's a sign...
