A Delayed Firmware Update

As mentioned in my previous posting, my 7900 had been idle for some time before printing the most recent job. During much of that time I'd been busy with other things; making prints, or doing anything else photographic hadn't been on my to-do list. I therefore hadn't looked lately to see if Epson had posted any updates to firmware or software for the 7900.

A couple of days ago I did that, and was surprised to find, on the U.S. Epson site, a firmware update dated 29 October 2014. As usual, Epson provided no clues as to what changed between the newer firmware version HN110EA, and the previous release, HN111E8. I've no idea how I missed the posting of this. I am certain I've checked the update page since last October. In any case, I downloaded the newer firmware.

I also downloaded an update of the Remote Panel 2 ("RP2") software for Macintosh OS X (I'm still using version 10.9.5 "Mavericks" of OS X, having found no compelling reason to update to the latest).

RP2 has always been twitchy for me. It seems to have trouble locating my printer. When RP2 eventually succeeds after several attempts, it seems to work fine. I'd hoped the newer RP2 (version 3.01) would improve, but alas, it hasn't. My printer is networked. There are reports that RP2 is more reliable with directly-connected (USB) printers. I've never had mine directly connected, so I can't report on that. Also, for me, RP2 never finds newer firmware; the search always fails. To work around that I download the firmware and then mount the image. I point RP2 to that, which works fine, and then proceed with the update, which also has always worked as expected.

I launched RP2. On the third try it located my printer and displayed its status. I selected the option to update firmware, navigated to the downloaded update file, and waited. RP2's status doesn't show much, only that the update is in process. The printer's LCD is a bit more informative, eventually showing a progress bar of asterisks. When this completed the printer restarted. All appeared to happen normally, and a check of the firmware version on the LCD indicated the new version.

However, when I returned to the computer, RP2 had raised a dialog box indicating the update had failed. No explanation, no numbers, only "Update failed." I dismissed that. RP2's status window showed a small blinking icon of the printer overlaid with an X.

Since the printer rebooted, and shows the proper firmware version installed, and since I can navigate through the menus and all appears normal, I suspect the firmware installation went fine and all's well. I've not made a print since the update, but I have a small job to do in the next few days. If that proceeds as expected and the print looks good, I'll forget about this. If not, I'll report back here.

  --Jay