Help! How to get old QMS Appletalk printer working under OSX

[fartheststar]

Hi,

I have been given a QMS-PS 410 laser printer. Can I get this to work under Mac OS X 10.2.8 with my G4 Dual 1.25 MDD machine? Any and all suggestions welcome!

Physical connection:

The printer has a parallel port and an appletalk port. My mac only has USB. I've seen an adapter for Parallel to USB... but I haven't seen appletalk to USB. Will the parallel to USB work under OS X?

Software:

Can I get drivers for (or find out if OS X supports) this printer? I went to the www.qms.com and it appears it's a discontinued printer, and the driver page confuses me... specifies "Macintosh" but doesn't specify whether it's for OS X or OS 9.

Please help!

 

[MisterMe]

Hi,

I have been given a QMS-PS 410 laser printer. Can I get this to work under Mac OS X 10.2.8 with my G4 Dual 1.25 MDD machine? Any and all suggestions welcome!

Physical connection:

The printer has a parallel port and an appletalk port. My mac only has USB. I've seen an adapter for Parallel to USB... but I haven't seen appletalk to USB. Will the parallel to USB work under OS X?

Software:

Can I get drivers for (or find out if OS X supports) this printer? I went to the www.qms.com and it appears it's a discontinued printer, and the driver page confuses me... specifies "Macintosh" but doesn't specify whether it's for OS X or OS 9.

Please help!

The serial port that you call AppleTalk was renamed LocalTalk when Apple changed its network protocol to work over a large variety of transports. Apple dropped LocalTalk with the introduction of the iMac. LocalTalk ports are not supported by MacOS X. AppleTalk over Ethernet is supported. Your QMS is a PostScript printer. Therefore, Apple's PostScript print driver should handle it without a hitch. PostScript printers are distinguished by their PPD files. The beauty of the PPD file is that it is plain ASCII text and is completely cross-platform. You can find the one that you need on the Konica-Minolta web site. To communicate with the printer, you will need to bridge LocalTalk and Ethernet. You might be able to find a bridge that serves that purpose. You may also buy a print server with a parallel port. Connect the Mac to the server via Ethernet. Connect the printer to the server via parallel printer cable.

 

[Sun Baked]

To communicate with the printer, you will need to bridge LocalTalk and Ethernet. You might be able to find a bridge that serves that purpose. You may also buy a print server with a parallel port. Connect the Mac to the server via Ethernet. Connect the printer to the server via parallel printer cable.

Asante, HP and a few others have the ethernet to localtalk bridges...

HPs site isn't too hard to find info on...

But at Asante you'd probably do better at http://www.asante.com/forums/default.asp

The forums there may have some of the info you need, even if you don't plan on using their product.

I have faith you'll notice the "AsantéTalk (LocalTalk-Ethernet Bridge)" section.

 

[fartheststar]

thanks to both of you for your help.. I'll check this stuff out.