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USB printer sharing between OSX and XP

iJon

iJon

macrumors 604
Original poster
I currently have a Dual Ghz Mirrored Door PowerMac and a intel machine on a dsl network. Does anyone know if there is anyway i can share an epson usb printer through my network. It doesnt matter if i need to purchase any software or not. Just curious if anybody has any ideas. I am running windows xp and 10.2.2 on my powermac. i have a epson 785 epx.

iJon
 
I'm not familiar with your printer, but I guess it's an inkjet, right? I have a big laserjet I just got, and I can assign it an IP address; I have it on my network and my Mac downstairs and he XP PC upstairs can both print to it jsut fine, it's really a nice setup. If your computers are on a network, my guess is that you can do it. You can turn on Printer sharing on your Mac and there is a way to do this on your PC as well, which you might have to do so your Mac can connect to your PC; PCs really have problems with connecting to anything but themselves unfortunately. My only worry is that the USB printer sharing might be a pain, are you going to use a hub or anythign like that? Tell me what you want to do more exactly, and I'll see if I can lend a hand!
 
Does it have a USB and Parallel port? If the 2 computers are near each other, you can plug the PC into the Parallel, the Mac into the USB. If you have both on DSL, do you have a router? Some routers have printer ports, but for some reason they can't be networked through the Mac.

If you want to go wireless, there are a couple of ways you could do that, but sometimes it's cheaper to just buy another printer. I know Epson has add-ons to make some of their printers networkable (wired and wireless), but for the same price you could buy yourself 2 or 3 C82 InkJets.

There is a way to network a USB printer between Macs, I'm not sure how to do it with a Mac and a PC (if it's even possible). Normally, I'd try www.xlr8yourmac.com or Apple's Knowledgebase, but I don't remember seeing it anywhere.

What kind of setup do you have? What kind of setup are you looking for? I think we can help you more if we had some more info.
 
Originally posted by solvs
Does it have a USB and Parallel port? If the 2 computers are near each other, you can plug the PC into the Parallel, the Mac into the USB. If you have both on DSL, do you have a router? Some routers have printer ports, but for some reason they can't be networked through the Mac.

If you want to go wireless, there are a couple of ways you could do that, but sometimes it's cheaper to just buy another printer. I know Epson has add-ons to make some of their printers networkable (wired and wireless), but for the same price you could buy yourself 2 or 3 C82 InkJets.

There is a way to network a USB printer between Macs, I'm not sure how to do it with a Mac and a PC (if it's even possible). Normally, I'd try www.xlr8yourmac.com or Apple's Knowledgebase, but I don't remember seeing it anywhere.

What kind of setup do you have? What kind of setup are you looking for? I think we can help you more if we had some more info.
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Thanks, everythign you told me i pretty much figured. it is a usb printer and i knew about the parallel and usb thing. I didnt think it would be possible. just curious though. i know epson makes those devices for usb printers to become ethernet but i dont think they make one for my printer. I will just end up getting a long usb cable for both computers,lol. thanks for your help anyways.

iJon
 
Is it connected to the mac or the PC? Through what type of connection? It might be possible if it is hooked up to your Mac, but I doubt it is possible if you hook it up to your PC.
 
Once attached to the PC or the mac, you should be able to share the printer on the network, from there the other comptuer just needs to access the printer as a share on the other computer.

you can do this easily and free, if you already have a network setup
 
On our home network, we bought this cool little adapter, it converts the parallel connector on the printer to a LAN port, assign it an IP and there you go, universal to just about any printer.
 
Originally posted by scem0
Is it connected to the mac or the PC? Through what type of connection? It might be possible if it is hooked up to your Mac, but I doubt it is possible if you hook it up to your PC.
Click to expand...
Sure you can, since you are in OSX there are a couple of ways to do this. Here is a link to one of them that uses no additial Microsoft software, and will work with XP Home

http://iharder.sourceforge.net/macosx/winmacprinter/

and here is one that uses a built in Unix printer sharing service, but I belive that it is only included with XP Pro...

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/itpro/networking/printservicesunix.asp

Good luck!
 
there are a few small apps and stuff on versiontracker that let you print share between OS X and XP.

good luck! 😀
 
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