A brand new, PowerPC compatible printer

[wnlewis]

I have had at least two such viruses that were caught and dispatched on the G4 Mac running 10.4.11. One came from a website. One came with an Email.

Having had that experience - and removing some viruses from clients' machines - I prefer to try to stay virus free.

So, if someone knows which version of ClamX will work, that will help.

Thank you.

 

[Project Alice]

I have had at least two such viruses that were caught and dispatched on the G4 Mac running 10.4.11. One came from a website. One came with an Email.

Having had that experience - and removing some viruses from clients' machines - I prefer to try to stay virus free.

So, if someone knows which version of ClamX will work, that will help.

Thank you.

Was this in 2005? I have never in my life heard of this happening. And if you've seen my previous replies I haven't had it happened on the cesspool of Windows either... I have many, many PPC Macs and I use them almost all the time when I'm on a computer. Honestly with an A/V you'll just be wasting resources which are already scarce on PPC. But, as it was already mentioned it's your computer I guess.

Which Linux distro(s) do you use? For many years my main desktop favourite has been Linux Mint.


Yep, I stood up and took notice in 2004 when the U.S. Govt warned users that they should stop using IE. That was my epiphany which led to a drastic change in my awareness regarding Windows and what I needed to do in order to ensure that I was not online carrying an "open sesame" sign.


Brings back memories! Reinstalling Windows has never been pleasant for me and eventually I developed a routine where every installation was imaged with Norton Ghost or sometimes Acronis True Image so that I wouldn't have to endure the hassle of reinstalling the drivers and recreating my preferred configuration whenever I ran into problems.


That's interesting, it appears that we think along similar lines. I went with Smoothwall Express on a (wait for it!) 1996 P133 with 32MB RAM, 500 MB HDD and of course, 2x 3COM PCI NICs and put my XP box behind it. I've been meaning to replace it with a P4 ThinkCentre that someone very kindly and thoughtfully dumped in the vicinity of my home.

I have been using openSUSE lately. I used to use Fedora but I really hate gnome 3 (I know I can install whatever DE I want) and there seems to be more support openSUSE.

Your firewall runs on a P133? What is your connection like? (Also that link is dead, but I found it on the web archive). I can't imagine that thing can pull very much bandwidth through it. Before I went with pfsence I was doing some experimenting and set up a Dual 500MHz Mystic G4 to do the job and I couldn't get more than 20mbps through it (my download speed is supposed to be 400mbps) With my current setup I get 430mbps~500mbps. It's running on an i5-4590T Lenovo ThinkCentre (well, sorta. I bought the thinkcentre then found out it had PCIe whitelist and wouldn't work with my quad port NIC, so I bought a gigabyte motherboard of the same architecture and put it in the Lenovo's case) 8GB of ram, and obviously pfsense which runs on FreeBSD.

 

[TheShortTimer]

I have been using openSUSE lately. I used to use Fedora but I really hate gnome 3 (I know I can install whatever DE I want) and there seems to be more support openSUSE.

Ok, thanks. I'm always eager to learn about which distro's other people are using and what their experiences have been. Beyond Linux Mint, everything I've tried desktop wise has resoundingly failed. I'll check out openSUSE on a Live DVD/USB.

Your firewall runs on a P133?

Yep, a Pentium 133Mhz - the pre MMX version.

A relative found it during a house clearing and they challenged me to find a use for it - which I did.

If that shocks you, the Coyote Linux firewall ran on a 486 and IPCOP apparently will work on a 386.

What is your connection like?

4.8 Mb/s according to my (Comcast owned) ISP.

(Also that link is dead, but I found it on the web archive).

Ah, this is the currently functional URL. Sorry about that.

I can't imagine that thing can pull very much bandwidth through it.

As you can see, my connection is far from stellar so it was hardly taxed. At the moment it's dismantled otherwise I'd test its performance for you. When it was shielding my XP box, I didn't notice any lagging or stuttering whilst watching/downloading standard-def video content that had a decent bitrate.

Before I went with pfsence I was doing some experimenting and set up a Dual 500MHz Mystic G4 to do the job and I couldn't get more than 20mbps through it (my download speed is supposed to be 400mbps) With my current setup I get 430mbps~500mbps. It's running on an i5-4590T Lenovo ThinkCentre (well, sorta. I bought the thinkcentre then found out it had PCIe whitelist and wouldn't work with my quad port NIC, so I bought a gigabyte motherboard of the same architecture and put it in the Lenovo's case) 8GB of ram, and obviously pfsense which runs on FreeBSD.

That well and truly puts my P133 and my P4 ThinkCentre in the shade. 😂 How easy was it to install and configure pfSense? I've got no experience with it, hence my curiosity.

 

[Project Alice]

4.8 Mb/s according to my (Comcast owned) ISP.

Oof, well that explains how you're able to use such a slow machine. My consumer router was a linksys WRT-AC1200 that for some reason wouldn't pull more than 100mbps, even though its supposed to work up to a gigabit WAN (And OpenWRT proved to be too unstable for use, it was being rebooted every day or so to keep the net up).
It works fine in bridge mode. That's what got me down the rabbit hole in the first place. I'll never buy a router again. I eventually want to pickup an ubiquity access point or something similar to use for wifi, but for now the consumer router in bridge mode does it's job well.

That well and truly puts my P133 and my P4 ThinkCentre in the shade. 😂 How easy was it to install and configure pfSense? I've got no experience with it, hence my curiosity.

It was actually very easy. It was up and online in seconds once the OS was installed. Figuring out how to setup pfblockerng and squid was a whole other learning experience though. I still have to add things to the whitelist occasionally when a site breaks because of it. Apple devices like my ATVs and iPhone are excluded from squid altogether because it interferes with the app store and updates. Which is fine, squid doesn't actually seem to be stopping a whole lot until I boot up Windows 10 and the log starts filling up. My Pfblocker lists take care of most the stuff. I just added squid a couple months ago as an extra layer of security.

Edit: I figured I'd add that my ISP is spectrum, so with a cable modem initial setup is basically nothing. I also put together a pfsense box for my dad who has century link, thus needs PPPoE setup to work. It was not hard, but not quite as straight forward as just plugging in the cable modem and telling pfsense which port was for the WAN. I did have to get a hold of century link for his login information, and put their modem\router combo into bridge mode. He's had it running for almost a year with no issues yet.

 

[wur10]

Can you verify that it does or doesn't (on Classic Mac OS and Tiger) and post back? I've been looking for a universal printer for awhile. Though I wouldn't get that one specifically as I want a color printer, but I'm sure if that one works a higher end color printing model of the same series would work as well.

I just connected my TiBook to the good old Ethernet and gave it a try. My MFC-L2730DW is connected to my network through WiFi, so I just added an Apple LaserWriter pointing to the printers IP-address.

It worked flawlessly in 10.4.11 and 9.2.2. Tiger saw the printer but prompted me to select a driver while in 9.2.2 I had to select the IP-address and the printer driver manually.

 

[bse5150]

I wasn't going to post this, but what the hell.

If you have a printer that you can't find a Mac OS driver (OS X or Classic Mac OS) for, or if you want to buy a particular printer model but you're holding back because it doesn't appear to be compatible with your old Macs, there is a solution: CUPS!

See if your printer has a Linux driver available. You can setup a CUPS printer server on an always-on Linux box (a Raspberry Pi would suffice) and send all of your print jobs to that. Easy peasy and works handy dandy. That's what I had to do to get my Powerbook 12" Leopard running machine to print to my Canon Multi-Function laser printer.

There are other advantages to using a Linux based CUPS server too. One really great advantage is that you're no longer limited to network printers. Now you can turn those old non-network printers into network printers that are readily available to any machine on your LAN. Hell, you can even use old parallel port dot matrix printers as a network printer provided your server has a parallel port. And you wouldn't have to wait for your dot matrix print jobs to complete either before starting another print job because your CUPS server will queue your print jobs and print them right after the other. More fun than dancing with a fat woman. lol.

My particular printer does scans and faxes too, but, again, no driver for my Powerbook. I found a solution to that too. My printer allows me to send scans and faxes to a Samba server. So when I scan documents (which I have to do from the printer control panel. Not a big deal though because i have to go to my printer to place the documents in the feeder anyway.) the scans are saved to my NAS which I can connect to from my Powerbook and work on till my heart's content. Same deal with faxes, incoming faxes are sent to my NAS which I can view on my Powerbook.

There's more than one way to skin a cat or print to an unsupported printer, as the case may be. Don't let Mac native printer drivers be your obstacle.

Oh, and CUPS is owned by Apple... So there's that too if you're an Apple guy to the core.

ADDENDUM:

I forgot to mention that there's avahi for Linux too. Can you say bonjour mes amis?

In closing I would just like to say: I'm just trying to get an erection! Denny Crane. (Feel free to edit that part out Mods if you're so inclined. I won't even blame it on Mad Cow if you do.)

 

[eyoungren]

I wasn't going to post this, but what the hell.

If you have a printer that you can't find a Mac OS driver (OS X or Classic Mac OS) for, or if you want to buy a particular printer model but you're holding back because it doesn't appear to be compatible with your old Macs, there is a solution: CUPS!

See if your printer has a Linux driver available. You can setup a CUPS printer server on an always-on Linux box (a Raspberry Pi would suffice) and send all of your print jobs to that. Easy peasy and works handy dandy. That's what I had to do to get my Powerbook 12" Leopard running machine to print to my Canon Multi-Function laser printer.

There are other advantages to using a Linux based CUPS server too. One really great advantage is that you're no longer limited to network printers. Now you can turn those old non-network printers into network printers that are readily available to any machine on your LAN. Hell, you can even use old parallel port dot matrix printers as a network printer provided your server has a parallel port. And you wouldn't have to wait for your dot matrix print jobs to complete either before starting another print job because your CUPS server will queue your print jobs and print them right after the other. More fun than dancing with a fat woman. lol.

My particular printer does scans and faxes too, but, again, no driver for my Powerbook. I found a solution to that too. My printer allows me to send scans and faxes to a Samba server. So when I scan documents (which I have to do from the printer control panel. Not a big deal though because i have to go to my printer to place the documents in the feeder anyway.) the scans are saved to my NAS which I can connect to from my Powerbook and work on till my heart's content. Same deal with faxes, incoming faxes are sent to my NAS which I can view on my Powerbook.

There's more than one way to skin a cat or print to an unsupported printer, as the case may be. Don't let Mac native printer drivers be your obstacle.

Oh, and CUPS is owned by Apple... So there's that too if you're an Apple guy to the core.

ADDENDUM:

I forgot to mention that there's avahi for Linux too. Can you say bonjour mes amis?

In closing I would just like to say: I'm just trying to get an erection! Denny Crane. (Feel free to edit that part out Mods if you're so inclined. I won't even blame it on Mad Cow if you do.)

There's an alternative to using a Linux box as a printerserver…Gutenprint for OS X. Gutenprint uses CUPS, but it does it on the host Mac. It doesn't have every driver, but sometimes you can get close enough. There was a time I was printing to two PC only inkjets from a G5. That was possible because of Gutenprint.

 

[sailingdarter]

Can you verify that it does or doesn't (on Classic Mac OS and Tiger) and post back? I've been looking for a universal printer for awhile. Though I wouldn't get that one specifically as I want a color printer, but I'm sure if that one works a higher end color printing model of the same series would work as well.

So specifically, in my use case, I use a HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M281. This is a Printer/Scanner combo. Though the specific model really does not matter. What I was looking for when I was researching it was that it was PostScript Compatible (It uses a PostScript Emulator) and it had a built in LPD daemon that ran on the printer itself. A LPD daemon is a process that exposes a TCP/IP Port to send jobs to a spooler process that is running on the printer itself. LPR/LPD is a somewhat older spooling solution that is being supplanted by IPP but most "office grade" printers still support it. System 7.5 though 9.2.2 support LPR printing. And ALL versions of OS X support it too (Hell even NeXTSTEP supported LPR Printing)


In short though I have gotten this printer working on the following
-Leopard/PPC
-System 7.5 (As Long as LaserWriter 8.5.1 is installed) through Mac OS 9.2.2 on both 68K and PPC hardware
-OPENSTEP 4.2 Intel on VMware Fusion

I do not have a Tiger Machine handy to try it out on at the moment but I am very sure it will work through LPR.


Also be aware that this also means that what ever printer you select has to be Ethernet capable. Cheap USB Printers will not cut it. Please see the link below for more information

Eric Bylenga :: Welcome

Be aware though, that I am only able to print on this printer from older versions of Mac OS. The Scanner can only be used from a modern Windows or Mac machine. Again this is JUST FOR PRINTING.