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Brother MFC-J470DW on PowerPC?

jrsx

jrsx

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 2, 2013
1,057
18
Tacoma, Washington
This printer which was just bought by my dad, does not support PowerPC based macs, and only Mac OS 10.6+. Can anybody help me print from my computer (in signature)? Could I print from google cloud, as it is cloud-ready, and is supported by google cloud? Or is that just Chromebooks? Or is there some other way to print? Thanks,
jrsx
 
jrsx

jrsx

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 2, 2013
1,057
18
Tacoma, Washington
I am not able to print through IP address, that I can figure out at least. Does anyone know of anyway to print over wifi? Or must drivers be fully supported to print through an IP address?
 
Altemose

Altemose

macrumors G3
Mar 26, 2013
9,189
487
Elkton, Maryland
jrsx said:
This printer which was just bought by my dad, does not support PowerPC based macs, and only Mac OS 10.6+. Can anybody help me print from my computer (in signature)? Could I print from google cloud, as it is cloud-ready, and is supported by google cloud? Or is that just Chromebooks? Or is there some other way to print? Thanks,
jrsx
Click to expand...

Your best bet would be to try and extract the CUPS driver out of the 10.6 package. Let me know if you need help with that...
 
T

tampasteve

macrumors 6502
May 30, 2013
268
0
Tampa, Florida, North American Sector, Earth, Fron
I had a similar issue with a Panasonic machine at our office. It (ironically) supports PPC machines, but not Intel (of course it supports all Windows from 2000 to 8.1). Try the following directions:
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting/database/cupsdocumentation

If your machine is not listed you can often find one that will work...but it can take a while. I worked on my machine for around 8 hours finding the right combination of drivers, etc. until it worked....
 
jrsx

jrsx

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 2, 2013
1,057
18
Tacoma, Washington
I downloaded the drivers for Snow Leopard off the website, and interestingly enough, they installed without a hitch on Leopard. Successfully. Odd..
But I still cannot print through USB or bonjour. It just pauses the printer, and when I try to resume the job in the queue, and says there is an error completing the job. I tried printing through IP with the driver, but it won't show up on the "add a printer" list in System prefs unless you actually select the printer in textedit or something. Then it still won't print. Anything else I can try?
 
J

JennX68

macrumors newbie
Jun 2, 2015
7
0
jrsx said:
I downloaded the drivers for Snow Leopard off the website, and interestingly enough, they installed without a hitch on Leopard. Successfully. Odd..
But I still cannot print through USB or bonjour. It just pauses the printer, and when I try to resume the job in the queue, and says there is an error completing the job. I tried printing through IP with the driver, but it won't show up on the "add a printer" list in System prefs unless you actually select the printer in textedit or something. Then it still won't print. Anything else I can try?
Click to expand...

Hi, jrsx, did you ever find a solution to this? I'm on Mac OS 10.5.8 and just purchased the Brother MFC-J470DW. I downloaded the driver for OS 10.6, and it looked like it would work (the printer shows up for me), but when I go to print, the print job in the print queue always shows "stopped."
 
Altemose

Altemose

macrumors G3
Mar 26, 2013
9,189
487
Elkton, Maryland
Printers that are unsupported in Leopard will need to be used with the generic PostScript printer drivers or third party drivers like Gutenprint.
 
J

JennX68

macrumors newbie
Jun 2, 2015
7
0
Altemose said:
Printers that are unsupported in Leopard will need to be used with the generic PostScript printer drivers or third party drivers like Gutenprint.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply, Altemose! Following your suggestion, I tried it with the generic postscript driver, and it almost worked - job appeared in the printer queue, printer showed it was receiving data, but nothing further happened and the job just disappeared for the queue. Using the generic PCL driver had a similar response (although in that case nothing showed up in the queue at all). So close to working! I think this is probably a sign that I should be upgrading my Mac. Thanks anyway!
 
Altemose

Altemose

macrumors G3
Mar 26, 2013
9,189
487
Elkton, Maryland
Some printers will never receive support under Gutenprint and others will never be bug-free under Gutenprint. Unfortunately, we cannot fault the manufacturers of the printers as Apple has made many changes to the printing system in recent versions of OS X that a number of them have to re-write existing drivers to support Mavericks and Yosemite when they worked under Mountain Lion and Lion. If Apple were to keep the underlying printing frameworks with minimal revisions, then I bet that printer manufacturers would still ship drivers for OS X Tiger! My Canon Pixma MG5220 which is about two or three years old supports OS X Tiger through Yosemite.
 
J

JennX68

macrumors newbie
Jun 2, 2015
7
0
Altemose said:
Some printers will never receive support under Gutenprint and others will never be bug-free under Gutenprint. Unfortunately, we cannot fault the manufacturers of the printers as Apple has made many changes to the printing system in recent versions of OS X that a number of them have to re-write existing drivers to support Mavericks and Yosemite when they worked under Mountain Lion and Lion. If Apple were to keep the underlying printing frameworks with minimal revisions, then I bet that printer manufacturers would still ship drivers for OS X Tiger! My Canon Pixma MG5220 which is about two or three years old supports OS X Tiger through Yosemite.
Click to expand...

Ah yes, I see what you're saying, makes sense. Thanks for trying to help. As I said, this just motivates me to get going on getting the new Mac I've been promising myself for ages!
 
J

JennX68

macrumors newbie
Jun 2, 2015
7
0
Altemose said:
What Mac do you have now and what are you considering?
Click to expand...

I'm currently puttering along with a 2008-era iMac running Leopard. It actually still works just fine, I'd be tempted to keep going with it, the main issue is the increasing scarcity of software and hardware that's compatible. But it's time for something new anyway. I'm looking at the latest iMacs - I'm confident that whichever one I choose it will be a big difference from what I currently have!
 
eyoungren

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
28,793
26,883
What program are you printing from?

I ask because in the industry I work in Macs and PCL printers have a finicky relationship. A lot of our printing to PCL printers was from QuarkXPress (a page layout application). Invariably, all we got was either garbage text or no printing. There is a setting in QXP for the kind of data for the app to send to the printer. You can choose ASCII, Binary or a combination of the two.

Setting the program to send ASCII was what always worked.

If the app you are trying to print from has the ability to switch the data type sent to the printer, I'd try setting it to ASCII if possible.

In any case PCL, which is HP's printing language, absolutely hates Appletalk and does not get along. With that in mind, if you set the printer up using Appletalk, you might also try going a different route and setting it up via IP printing. That will require knowing the printer's IP address and/or setting a static address for it in your router.
 
J

JennX68

macrumors newbie
Jun 2, 2015
7
0
gooser said:
jenn, won't your imac run 10.6?
Click to expand...

I suppose it likely would, but I've always been too lazy to upgrade before, as I didn't really have the need. At this stage, I think it's time to get a new machine and get on board with all the latest and greatest!
 
J

JennX68

macrumors newbie
Jun 2, 2015
7
0
eyoungren said:
What program are you printing from?

I ask because in the industry I work in Macs and PCL printers have a finicky relationship. A lot of our printing to PCL printers was from QuarkXPress (a page layout application). Invariably, all we got was either garbage text or no printing. There is a setting in QXP for the kind of data for the app to send to the printer. You can choose ASCII, Binary or a combination of the two.

Setting the program to send ASCII was what always worked.

If the app you are trying to print from has the ability to switch the data type sent to the printer, I'd try setting it to ASCII if possible.

In any case PCL, which is HP's printing language, absolutely hates Appletalk and does not get along. With that in mind, if you set the printer up using Appletalk, you might also try going a different route and setting it up via IP printing. That will require knowing the printer's IP address and/or setting a static address for it in your router.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestions! I tried printing from several programs, all with the same result: MS-Word, MS-Entourage (I think my Mac is showing its age there), Firefox, and Text Edit. I might have a go at the IP printing thing you suggest and see how far I get.
 
Altemose

Altemose

macrumors G3
Mar 26, 2013
9,189
487
Elkton, Maryland
@JennX68 If that iMac is a 2008 model then it is capable of running OS X Yosemite, and if given enough memory and an SSD will run it rather well. I would consider upgrading your existing computer before shelling out over a grand for a new iMac!
 
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