🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi everyone, I'm encountering a weird phenomenon that could be best described as a printer's attempt at suicide: 

the print head in my EP 1200 suddenly moves some inches further to the left (looking at the front) and continues to print "off-paper". After the entire paper sheet is pulled through the print head begins to move erratically crashing repeatedly against the left edge and the traction belt slips through. I have to pull the plug to stop its destructive activity. 

Even after turning it on after some while of being turned off and disconnected it starts acting like crazy again. 

This happens no matter whether I use PR or the native Epson drivers - BTW I'm on Mac 8.6. 

I'm scared to turn it on now. I trashed the printing related prefs but to no avail. 

I really need this printer - anyone run into this before? 

Is there a way to reset the printer besides turning it off? 

Any help is very much appreciated! 

Cheers   Martin