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The Dell 1320cn Printer and OS X

Do you have a Dell 1320c or 1320cn? And a Mac? Are you tired of not being able to print? Fret no more!

The drivers from Dell are stuck way back in the Tiger (v10.4) and Leopard (v10.5) days and I’ve had no end of trouble with them. But, as is so often the case, the hardware inside that Dell printer isn’t really Dell at all. What you actually have is a revamped version of the Fuji Xerox DocuPrint C525A.

Luckily, Fuji Xerox are rather more amenable to keeping their drivers driving and their printers printing than Mike’s company is.

Installation

You could install the drivers directly from Fuji Xerox, but why bother? Apple have already rolled the drivers into a snazzy package that will auto-update when new versions are released. Head over to the FujiXerox Printer Drivers page on Apple’s website, download and install the printer driver package. This works on the latest Mavericks version, all the way back to Snow Leopard.

Screenshot of the Fuji Xerox C525 A-AP v3.2 printer driver being installed for a Dell 1320cn printer.

Then just head to System Preferences > Printers and click the plus to add a new printer. My 1320c is the networked version, so I just chose ‘IP’ and entered the address. Give it a name and location, then open up the list next to the ‘Use’ label. Choose ‘Select Software…’ and search for C525.

You’ll get two drivers, one called FX DocuPrint C525 A v3.2 and one called FX DocuPrint C525 A-AP v3.2. I have no idea what the extra AP gets you, but I opted for the ‘more is better’ approach and chose that second one.

You’ll then need to tell the system that it has a 250 page sheet feeder. This isn’t a default and if you don’t, your printer will only be interested in taking paper from the manual feed, which is a laborious task.

Done

Believe it or not, you should now be able to print! Even the Supply Levels screen works!

The only thing I miss a little is the lack of a secondary monochrome-only driver, but this is easily sorted in the printer configuration and OS X makes it easy to save and recall these. The monochrome option is in the ‘Fuji Xerox Features’ menu, accessible from the print dialogue when you hit ‘Show Details’.

With that you should be printing lovely colour copies from that black monolith for years to come.

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