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hmm... printer question from a recent switcher...

D

discomonkey

macrumors newbie
Original poster
okay... so i have an HP LaserJet 1100 that i'm using with my PC. It's a parallel port connection and since I just bought my new PB (weeee!!!), i'm wondering is this printer pretty much garbage? Can i purchase a parallel to USB adaptor and will it work on a Mac?

TIA
 
I'm going to sleep momentarily, so I can't research the answer, but I'm pretty sure, depending on which version of Windows is running on your PC, that you can actually share a Windows printer with the Mac - i.e., keep it where it is, and print to it over the network.

I'm not sure you can find the appropriate drivers to connect it directly to the Mac. Others here probably can answer that better than I can....
 
jsw said:
I'm going to sleep momentarily, so I can't research the answer, but I'm pretty sure, depending on which version of Windows is running on your PC, that you can actually share a Windows printer with the Mac - i.e., keep it where it is, and print to it over the network.

I'm not sure you can find the appropriate drivers to connect it directly to the Mac. Others here probably can answer that better than I can....
Click to expand...

thanks for taking a stab at it... i appreciate it.

the thing is... i'm pretty much chucking my PC because it's crapping out (reason for switching) so if i can't connect directly to the mac, then this printer is pretty much useless to me... i guess my gf just inherited a laser printer...
 
...will a parallel port to USB converter work??

I have the same problem... I have a nice HP Laserjet printer that is connected to my PC which my Mac shares. I would like to ditch the PC at some point, and I was wondering if a parallel port to USB converter would work. Anyone have experience with this?

Searching Apple support gives this...

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=43027
 
Did you notice the google ads at the bottom of the page?

There were such solutions but I'm not sure whether the drivers still work or have been updated. It's been almost two years since I've seen one of the boxes.

[EDIT]
Forget that. With the addition of the document link, they changed. Maybe saying USB to Parallel port converter will help.
[/EDIT]
 
Yes it does.
I have a Belkin F5U002-BLU (I bough around 1999) it works fine with my Powerbook 15" Aluminum or Powermac G4 with an old HP4M.


Scottyk9 said:
I have the same problem... I have a nice HP Laserjet printer that is connected to my PC which my Mac shares. I would like to ditch the PC at some point, and I was wondering if a parallel port to USB converter would work. Anyone have experience with this?

Searching Apple support gives this...

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=43027
Click to expand...
 
lesson to learn here: only buy such printers that can do networking. either ethernet or wifi. i bought my laserjet back in 1999 when i was using a pc, and thank god it was future-proof 🙂 now i have a deskjet in addition and that does wifi. can't beat network connections...
 
... parallel to USB adapters sometimes work

I recently bought a parallel to USB adapter to try hooking up my wife's TiBook to an old but still very usable Lexmark Optra E+, which is a Windows only, parallel only connection. The adapter claimed to be "Mac only".

Ironically, the USB adapter worked to connect the printer to my PC USB laptop, and I suspected it would have anyways. But when I tried the drivers for Mac, I discovered that the drivers were only for OS 9, not OS X. I think that the key is to get a reputable brand name that has up-to-date drivers. The brand I bought was sort of a generic no name - cheaper, but not obviously supported.

My other problem is my Lexmark is a Windows only printer, but I understand that GimpPrint (?) has some viable workarounds to allow cross platform printing. I can't try it out yet because the parallel to USB adapter has to be working first.
 
HP Laserjet 1000

Yeah after I made the switch I realized that I couldn't use my HP Laserjet 1000 with my Powerbook because HP has no drivers for it. Eventhough it is a USB printer, I can't get it to work with the Powerbook. Already in the hole from the computer purchase, buying another laser printer really stings.
 
This might help to get the USB to parallel cable part to work, but you still need to find a CUPS driver for the printer itself.

I managed to get my Belkin F5U002 cable to work by using usbtb, which I downloaded from sourceforge.net:

usbtb at sourceforge

I used the .dmg file. This sets up a new backend for CUPS, and comes with a script that automatically detects the type of printer that's attached to the cable.

If you don't have the right CUPS driver for the printer, you could try clicking on the 'Home page' link on the sourceforge page. You might find newer drivers there, or from one of the pages linked to there.
 
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