Connecting to Home Office Network

[balofagus]

Hello, I was wondering if it would be at all possible for my iBook G4 to connect wirelessly to our Home Office Network (that isn't wireless) for the sole use of printing. The Home Office is really just our two XP boxes (one running Home, and the other Pro).

Our current setting goes something like this:
-Modem provided by ISP
-connected to D-Link router
the D-link router sprouts to both of our XP boxes plus my Airport Express (which then broadcasts to me sitting here on the couch in the other room)

Now, the printer is connected to the better of our XP boxes which is, as I said, connected to the D-Link. I realize I can just disconnect it from the XP box and plug it into my Airport to print off the iBook, I just wondered if there was another way.

If anything is unclear just yell at me and I'll try to re-explain. Thanks for the help!

PS. I hit the post button before I was finished by accident (I always forget that Tab doesn't always just indent) so if anyone got a half post I apologize.

 

[captainbeefheat]

from what I understand in one way or another the mac is connected into the network and getting the same connection as the wiondoze machines? If so it's connected. Go into system preferences then sharing and enable windows sharing and printer sharing. When you go to print something under printer menu click add printer then a menu pops up click more printers then under windows printing again top menu locate the printer. If you don't see it click were you see workgroup second menu and see if there are other network groups there.

Make sense? Hope so...

 

[velocityg4]

I may be wrong but I do not believe printer sharing works between Windows and Mac OS X. There are only two ways I know of that will work. You can either get a print server to directly connect your printer to the network. If your printer is an all in one this may not be successful. The other way that would definetly work would be to buy a network ready printer that is both Mac OS and Windows compatible then directly connect it by ethernet. The HP Photosmart 3200 is one that offers ethernet connectivity.

 

[balofagus]

Well, I thought it worked, but I was wrong. I enabled the sharing (Windows and Printer) then I opened up a file to see if it worked. The Print Status Window pops up and jumps to 43% (This is where I chime in: "Well wasn't that easy!") however it just sat there with the occasional beach ball and that weird candy cane type progress bar humming away.

I decided to unplug myself from the Airport and just plug the Ethernet cable into the iBook. That didn't help.

Still connected to the ethernet cable I went the Printer's and Faxes pane, it said it would connect to "Last Printer Used". I'm guessing thats why the right printer popped up. I searched for printers but there are none apparently.

Just to be sure I went back to the Sharing thing...there's a little Yellow exclamation mark saying I have to enable an account to share with under the Windows Sharing part. What boggles me is it also says that the windows machines will be able to access my Home Folder (if thats so why do I have to enable an account?)

I'm going to plug myself back into the Airport because it says that the Windows boxes will find me at some IP Address (I figure that has something to do with the Airport) and see if they really can find my Home Folder because my iBook can't find them (or at least I can't)

Any further input would be great and I apologize for this series of long posts.

 

[stevep]

This is straight from the Help files on my Mac:

Setting up to print to a printer shared by a Windows computer via SMB/CIFS
You can print to a printer that is connected to a Windows computer and has been set up to be shared. You need to ask the printer's owner for the printer's workgroup and for any necessary user name and password.


Open the document to print, and choose File > Print.
Choose Add Printer from the Printer pop-up menu, and then click More Printers.
Choose Windows Printing from the top pop-up menu, choose a network workgroup from the pop-up menu that appears directly below it, select a workgroup from the list, and click Choose.
Any Windows printers in the network you've chosen appear in the Printer List.

Select the printer, choose it's model from the Printer Model pop-up menu, and then click Choose. Enter the user name and password for the printer when prompted.
IMPORTANT: Be sure to choose the correct printer model for the printer you're using. For more information, see the documentation that came with the printer. If you have an HP PCL compatible printer that is not listed in the Printer Model pop-up menu, choose the printer model that most closely matches your printer. See the link below for a list of compatible printer models you can choose if your printer isn't listed


If your computer cannot determine the options that are installed on your printer, a dialog appears that lets you choose those options. Make sure the settings in that dialog accurately reflect your printer's installed options so you can take full advantage of them. Then click Continue.

If you are trying to add a Windows printer that is not available, you may need to contact your network administrator for assistance.

 

[balofagus]

Thanks velocityg4. I'm not about to go out and do either of those (switching the USB cable ain't too tough!) because at the moment I can't afford a new printer but maybe at a later date.

 

[balofagus]

Well, it works now! This little bit about "choose it's model from the Printer Model pop-up menu", seems I forgot to do that...upon choosing Epson Stylus C42UX and printing my photo again it worked perfectly (if you can call the quality this thing spits out perfect).

Anywho, many thanks to everyone for their help!

Stevep, what you said does work, but not the way I want it to. I followed your instructions and low and behold the printer reacts and starts to print. I asked the thing to print a photo from my iPhoto Library. What I got was 5 pages of gobbledeegook and I had to cancel it by stopping the print job from the windows machine. The printer popup comes up like it normally does but the icon is different (it looked like a big lazer printer).

The first few lines of my 'photo' are:
%!PS-Adobe-3.0
%RBINumCopies: 1
%%Pages: (atend)
the rest looks like some computer programm code

Just to be sure, I tried printing a Word Document...same thing. Now I have 7 pages of stuff (good thing I used scrap paper!)

EDIT - I don't even have Adobe Anything 3.0 on my iBook...I think the version of Elements thats on the windows machine is 3 but I'm not sure...bizarre

 

[stevep]

At a guess, I would say that you have the wrong printer driver installed then. I'm not sure (as I use a print server rather than a printer connected through an XP box) but I reckon that you have to have the right driver installed on the iBook as well as the XP box.
It could be that your iBook driver is the problem, and you might have to try an alternative. The alternatives are the bundled Mac OS X drivers, the latest download from the printer manufacturer or using a CUPS driver.
I use CUPS drivers, but not the latest v5 ones (they didn't work for me) - I've got v4.2.7 I think. Go to http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/ for these.
You're obviously very close to success here as you are actually printing your documents, its just a small language problem!

 

[balofagus]

Edited my previous post. Thanks for the help Steve! Anyway...if my printer is working do I need to install these new drivers or should I just stick with what works?

 

[stevep]

If it works, DON'T fix it !!
You might want to download a program called Printer Setup Repair, which (among other things) will allow you to take a backup of your printer setup and restore it at a later date if necessary.

 

[balofagus]

I downloaded Printer Setup Repair and took the backup. I'm just wondering whether I'd be able to restore it at a later date seeing as it's only a 7 day trial or do I need to purchase a license?