The SO’s printer died and we thought it would be a good idea to just get a print server and share mine over the same network we use to share the cable modem. 
My computer now prints to it just fine, but we can’t seem to get her’s to work right. :rolleyes:
We’ve upgraded her OS to 9.0 from 8.5 which was necessary to install the printer driver. 
I’ve tried everything I can think of. Because neither of us are any good with Mac’s we’re at something of an impass. :eek:
Chooser has the printer’s icon on the left side. When I select it nothing appears in the Connect To: box. When I click the Setup button it brings up a dialog box to select between high or low resolutions. I select high, the box closes, nothing else happens. When I subsequently close Chooser it advises me that I’ve changed my printer and I should visit page setup in all of my open apps. :o
I’ve tried using the HD->Applications->Desktop Printer Utility utility and it won’t allow me to select any driver but Laserwriter 8. Ok so that’s the driver I’ll try and I move forward to the bit where I put in the IP address, 192.168.0.141, and click the Verify (I think) button and it returns an answer that the printer was found at that IP address. Printing to it and viewing the queue shows a stalled queue. I’m thinking it’s because it’s got the wrong driver, but it won’t let me change the driver. 
What gives? Anybody know? 
Now I wanna hook up the printer directly to the Mac, but the USB pinout is a round cable. WTF? Now I gotta’ go get a different cable just to test it with? :mad:
What I can’t believe is that people tell me they like Macs 'cause they’re easy to use. Total BS.
I used to do this stuff for a living, so I’ll give it a shot.
First of all, we need to know what products you are talking about. What printer is this? What print server? What kind of Mac? What kind of computer are you using?
That doesn’t sound like USB at all. Sounds more like a Mac serial connection. Does it look like a S-video jack, but with more pins (8 or 9)?
Just because you don’t know the answer doesn’t make this so. You’re simply unfamiliar with Macs and are probably accustomed to doing things a different way. Don’t blame the problem on OS propaganda.
Also, since this Mac is now on v9.0 you may as well take it all the way up to 9.2.2 (or whatever the last release of 9.x was). The Software Update control panel can be used for this. This may even help with the problem.
I haven’t a Mac and have only a very passin aquaintance with them, but I do recall reading of a Systems Administrator spending a whole night trying to get a printer working with a Mac, including reinstalling the OS 3 times and being unable to fix the problem, mentioned it at work as a response to the question of why he looked completely nackered. His tech told him that what was needed was a crossover cable. Two minute job.
Might help, might not. Hope it’s some use to you.
Since you’re on an ancient Mac OS, there are two things to begin with: the printer must have a network compatible driver available for Mac OS 9. Not all printers ever did or do. Sometimes they give you a single driver that works for directly-connected printers as well as network printers, and sometimes they give you two separate drivers, and sometimes they just don’t give you squat – it won’t work on the network. This is a vendor issue.
Also the old Mac OS uses AppleTalk for printing (sometimes called EtherTalk, for AppleTalk over Ethernet). Despite file sharing working with TCP/IP at the end, I don’t think printing ever did, at least for most printer drivers (I think the Apple LaserWriter driver did for just about any PostScript printer). However since you have an old crappy Mac and a PC, I’ll guess that you don’t have a PostScript printer (they’re higher end and you don’t need one usually).
Okay, the problem with the above is, a lot of cheap print servers don’t speak EtherTalk – they want to talk TCP/IP or nothing. So even if you have a network compatible driver, unless you have a high-end printer server like a JetDirect, it just won’t work with AppleTalk.
If you can get your hands on Mac OS X, your problems will mostly go away. Yeah, AppleTalk is there as a legacy thing, but you don’t need it. Plus if your printer is somewhat modern, it’s probably got a Mac OS X driver. If not, Gimp-print is built in with support for virtually everything via Ghostscript. Okay, sounds not-easy, but when you set up printers you’ll see that it’s easy enough. And did I mention that it’s all TCP/IP?
Spiralscratch,
Thanks for your help, here’s some more info. The printer is a Canon I-850. It does come with a print driver for el Macko. That’s why we upgraded to 9.0 'cause it originally had 8.5 and the driver reported needing at least 8.6. Also, in chooser there are two icons for the I-850 one with a print server and one of just the printer.
The print server is a Zonet ZPS3601. NOT a bottom of the line. It’s got all sort of settings for Appletalk, but the company has this to say,
Hi Ross,
The print server supports TCP/IP, not AppleTalk protocols. I’ve attached a
link below for how-to configure printer or print server for Mac Oses.
Please review it.
http://www.uvm.edu/cit/tcpip/?Page=ClassisOS-printing.html
Thank you for choosing Zonet.
Zonet Customer Service
tech@zonetusa.com
Zonet USA Corporation
The Mac is some sort of G3 thingy laptop. There is no associated docking station.
I’m using an IBM clone that I built. 600GB of hard driveage (for all those MP3’s), VIA motherboard, Athlon 1800+, 512 MB Ram, Geforce4 5600 Ultra. I mention all of this not to just brag, but to verify that I know something about what I’m doing in the PC realm. The router is a D-Link DI-704.
The port I’m looking at is round with four pins (plus a square alignment pin) with what looks to me like a USB symbol next to it. Is that what it is or is it more Mac gibberish?
There’s no way I’m going to give Mac a break until this printer is working.
Where can the Software Update control panel be found?
Myglaren,
It might help if I was gonna’ go directly from the Mac to a network-ready printer, but I’m not. Thanks anywaize.
Balthisar,
Printer driver - check
network printer driver - check I think
Postscript printer - that’s a negative
In my Printserver Configuration control panel here on my PC where it works there’s a check box to enable AppleTalk Support. It has been checked. There’s also an AppleTalk Cfg tab where I tell it the printer name and the zone. The name has been designated as “canonI850”. And the zone is “*” which is how the Printserver documentation said to set it up.
On a side note: An update to 9.1 may be useful. 9.0 was considered buggy. Don’t bother to update to 9.2 though, as it is mainly designed to support use along side of OS X, the newest (and completely different) Mac OS.
Sorry for the late, partial response. I’m in the middle of moving and haven’t had a lot of time to look into this.
According to their website, this print server does support AppleTalk. Either the tech who responded to you needs to learn his product, or their given specs are wrong. Either is bad, in my opinion. You mention a checkbox to turn on AppleTalk, so I have to believe the tech is an idiot. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any documentation on this unit on their web site in an attempt to make sense of this unit myself.
My guess is that the print server is identifying itself to the network as a Postscript LaserWriter, and not as the printer you have. This is why the Mac cannot see it. The network printer driver is probably used in instances when the printer is connected to another Mac and printer sharing is turned on (I have to look into this). Again, the print server’s manual and a real spec sheet would be really helpful here. Zonet’s site is lousy on the support front.
I’ll see if I can figure out any way to get Mac OS 9 to print to a non-LaserWriter that is identified as such. If this were Mac OS X, it would be possible. I believe that, unfortunately, OS X isn’t an option for your particular Mac.
The port you are seeing is an ADB port. Before USB, Macs used this port for connecting the keyboard and mouse.
Control panels can be accessed most easily from the Apple menu. It’s just a folder in the system folder, so you can get to it that way also.
Does this Mac have a PC Card slot? If so, the easiest solution might be to pick up a USB card and connect to the printer that way (assuming the printer’s USB port is free).