Crummy Grays on LaserJet 5

[chad royer]

Sorry if this has been covered. I tried searching, but always ended up with 14,000 results that had nothing to do with my search...

I just got a LaserJet 5, and am printing from OS-X 10.4.9 with CUPS 1.2, using the 'HP LaserJet Series PCL 4/5 CUPS 1.2' driver. I am consistently getting really crummy results for grays/grayscale ramps. I have the printer set to 600DPI, so it should be able to print smooth gray areas.

Is there a setting I'm missing somewhere, or something I should be doing differently? Or is this an issue with CUPS rendering?

Thanks in advance,
Chad