Printer issues driving my crazy

[NiceBloke]

Hi All,   (sorry about the huge post)

I seem to be having no end of 'issues' with my printer. I have an
Epson Photo 950, USB and FC2 (2.6.7-1.494.2.2).

Basicly, I cannot get my printer to respond more than once - and I
think its a USB problem.

If I reboot and type the Escputil command for checking ink, I get:

[root at mailgate root]# escputil -u -i -r /dev/usb/lp0 
Escputil version 4.2.6, Copyright (C) 2000-2001 Robert Krawitz
Escputil comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type 'escputil -l'
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type 'escputil -l' for details.

Read from printer timed out
Cannot parse output from printer

But, if I try again straight away, I get:

[root at mailgate root]# escputil -u -i -r /dev/usb/lp0 
Escputil version 4.2.6, Copyright (C) 2000-2001 Robert Krawitz
Escputil comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type 'escputil -l'
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type 'escputil -l' for details.

          Ink colour    Percent remaining
               Black     19
                Cyan     57
             Magenta     47
              Yellow     13
          Light Cyan     46
       Light Magenta     42
   Black/Dark Yellow     99

Which is fab, just like I'd expect. If I try however to do anything
else with the printer it just 'hangs'. For example trying Escputil
again, gets:

[root at mailgate root]# escputil -u -i -r /dev/usb/lp0 
Escputil version 4.2.6, Copyright (C) 2000-2001 Robert Krawitz
Escputil comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type 'escputil -l'
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type 'escputil -l' for details.

and nothing more - it doesn't time out - I can't kill -9 the process.
I have to reboot to clear it.

Now I know this printer works, and I know there is enough ink - there
are no red lights on the printer.

This is the fun part - there is nothing in the logs about USB at all
when it hangs. If I try and print anything (from within the CUPS
webpage or a test doc) I get the following in my cups error.log

Unable to open USB device "usb://EPSON/Stylus%20Photo%20950": No such device

Along with lots of 'Unknown directive @@' lines

lsmod gives:

Module                  Size  Used by
ip_conntrack_irc       70769  0 
ip_conntrack_ftp       71153  0 
ipt_limit               2625  2 
ipt_LOG                 5825  1 
parport_pc             21249  1 
lp                      9133  0 
parport                35977  2 parport_pc,lp
autofs4                20677  0 
sunrpc                141861  1 
ipt_REJECT              5057  0 
ipt_state               1857  1 
ip_conntrack           25569  3 ip_conntrack_irc,ip_conntrack_ftp,ipt_state
iptable_filter          2369  1 
ip_tables              13889  5
ipt_limit,ipt_LOG,ipt_REJECT,ipt_state,iptable_filter
via_rhine              19273  0 
mii                     3777  1 via_rhine
floppy                 54001  0 
sg                     28385  0 
dm_mod                 47317  0 
usblp                  10817  1 
joydev                  7169  0 
usb_storage            58121  0 
uhci_hcd               28505  0 
ehci_hcd               27973  0 
button                  4825  0 
battery                 7117  0 
asus_acpi               9177  0 
ac                      3533  0 
nvidia               4822196  12 
ipv6                  216325  18 
ext3                   96937  3 
jbd                    66521  1 ext3
sata_via                4805  0 
libata                 29637  1 sata_via
sd_mod                 17473  0 
scsi_mod              105361  4 sg,usb_storage,libata,sd_mod

and rpm -qa | grep gimp gives:

gimp-data-extras-1.2.0-11
xsane-gimp-0.92-10
gimp-print-cups-4.2.6-11
gimp-print-plugin-4.2.6-11
gtkam-gimp-0.1.11-2
gimp-2.0.4-0.fc2.1
gimp-print-utils-4.2.6-11
gimp-print-4.2.6-11

dmesg shows this on boot:
Aug 11 13:53:33 mailgate kernel: drivers/usb/class/usblp.c: usblp0:
USB Bidirectional printer dev 3 if 0 alt 0 proto 2 vid 0x04B8 pid
0x0005
Aug 11 13:53:33 mailgate kernel: usbcore: registered new driver usblp
Aug 11 13:53:33 mailgate kernel: drivers/usb/class/usblp.c: v0.13: USB
Printer Device Class driver

cat /proc/bus/usb/devices gives this for the printer:

T:  Bus=03 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=01 Cnt=02 Dev#=  3 Spd=12  MxCh= 0
D:  Ver= 1.10 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS= 8 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=04b8 ProdID=0005 Rev= 1.00
S:  Manufacturer=EPSON
S:  Product=USB Printer
S:  SerialNumber=L76010309150106370
C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=c0 MxPwr=  2mA
I:  If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=07(print) Sub=01 Prot=02 Driver=usblp
E:  Ad=01(O) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS=  64 Ivl=0ms
E:  Ad=82(I) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS=  64 Ivl=0ms

ls -la /dev/usb/lp0 gives:
crw-rw----  1 root lp 180, 0 Feb 23 21:02 /dev/usb/lp0

Could anybody offer me any clues? Even a way of increasing logging would help.
Is there any other information I can provide?

I have tried other USB ports in this machine.

--
NiceBloke, going slowy insane.