Printing from our PowerPC macs

[glsillygili]

I never tried setting up my printer on any of my power macs until today. I was surprised to find that Tiger found my new printer in bonjour and connected to it. I then selected a generic HP deskjet driver and it completely worked and printed out. Never thought I would be able to use a new printer with a 20 year old PowerMac G3. Anyone else have any printing stories?

 

[Amethyst1]

Anyone else have any printing stories?

I had the same experience with a recent HP LaserJet. I used a generic PCL6 driver and it worked as a basic printer on Tiger.

 

[eyoungren]

I never tried setting up my printer on any of my power macs until today. I was surprised to find that Tiger found my new printer in bonjour and connected to it. I then selected a generic HP deskjet driver and it completely worked and printed out. Never thought I would be able to use a new printer with a 20 year old PowerMac G3. Anyone else have any printing stories?

I've got two Samsung Xpress series laser printers. One color, one B&W. Work on every Mac/PC I've used them with. I did have to manually install the print drivers into my Leopard and Snow Leopard Macs though.

These are both network printers and I have static IP addresses assigned to them. They also have AirPrint so I can print direct from my iPhones and my iPad.

Been really great printers.

 

[u47]

It does not matter at all whether it is a modern printer or not, in any case, on a good printer is possible to somehow print out . Even DOS programs can print to the aforementioned PCL6, for example PCAD 4.5
Problems arise mainly with win printers dummies, that stop working already on the next OS version.
If there are no drivers for the latter group, then oh.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

I have had issues with printing and my powerpc computers. When I can get it to work then great (usually use gutenprint), but my fallback is a network printer/scanner to my elcap and hisi boxes.

 

[alectrona6400]

i have a laserjet 3055 (arguably on its last legs) and i have managed to get it working on OS X leopard. i think tiger worked with it too, but memory isn't serving me right on that.

 

[eyoungren]

I have had issues with printing and my powerpc computers. When I can get it to work then great (usually use gutenprint), but my fallback is a network printer/scanner to my elcap and hisi boxes.

Do you have at least one Mac that prints fine natively to the printer? If so, have you thought of using that Mac a s aprintserver for your PowerPC Macs?

In my old job we used two laser printers that were circa late 90s. Both were Appletalk and worked perfectly with the G4 and G5. but not with the Mac Pro. The MP could print but there would be gaps, almost link an inkjet printer missed a line. So one of the G4s served as a print server for the MacPro. Without that I never would have gotten things right.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Thats a good idea. I think to test things out,I could use my powermac out in the garage. I have two printers out there that would be good guinea pigs.

 

[Macbookprodude]

Has anyone ever used an HP Photosmart c4280 printer with OS 9 or even Leopard ?

 

[Alb_rn]

Has anyone ever used an HP Photosmart c4280 printer with OS 9 or even Leopard ?

Drivers are available for 10.5 from the hp website, so it should work at least on Leopard.

 

[dbdjre0143]

On the topic of print servers, I have a Brother printer that annoyingly won't work with PPC OSX or Linux from all I can tell. None of the Gutenprint drivers work for it, and none of the "universal" (PCL and Postscript) drivers I've tried work either. Disabling the official 10.6 driver OS check actually installs it on Leopard, but it doesn't actually work, and the official Linux driver has x86/64 binaries only.

However, I have a laptop running Windows 2kPro that supports the printer fine. Does anyone have any experience with setting up Windows as a print server that OSX / Debian can use? In my minor experimentation, it seemed like the client machines would still need a compatible driver, defeating the purpose, but it sounds like in your setup @eyoungren, that was not the case?

 

[eyoungren]

On the topic of print servers, I have a Brother printer that annoyingly won't work with PPC OSX or Linux from all I can tell. None of the Gutenprint drivers work for it, and none of the "universal" (PCL and Postscript) drivers I've tried work either. Disabling the official 10.6 driver OS check actually installs it on Leopard, but it doesn't actually work, and the official Linux driver has x86/64 binaries only.

However, I have a laptop running Windows 2kPro that supports the printer fine. Does anyone have any experience with setting up Windows as a print server that OSX / Debian can use? In my minor experimentation, it seemed like the client machines would still need a compatible driver, defeating the purpose, but it sounds like in your setup @eyoungren, that was not the case?

Yeah, the printers at my old job were Xante's and fully supported Appletalk. It was just a simple matter of sharing the printers that had already been set up on the G4. On the MP side, as I recall, I used a generic driver or something. The end result was just that the MP sent the printer code stream to the G4, which then dumped it into the print queue and the driver on the G4 just interpreted everything.

In your situation, here's what I'd try (it's also how I set up my Samsung XPress printers. This is assuming your Brother is a network printer.

Create a new printer, select IP, put in the iP address of the printer. For the protocol, select HP-JetDirect. Give the printer a name and location if you like - but don't name the printer before you put in the IP address, otherwise the IP address will change to the printer name (and vice versa).

Once it's all set, click Add. It'll spin for a bit, but eventually you'll get a box where you can set up the driver you want to use. Dig through that and find the manufacturer's print driver (try that first). Finish up and then try a simple print job.

 

[dbdjre0143]

Yeah, the printers at my old job were Xante's and fully supported Appletalk. It was just a simple matter of sharing the printers that had already been set up on the G4. On the MP side, as I recall, I used a generic driver or something. The end result was just that the MP sent the printer code stream to the G4, which then dumped it into the print queue and the driver on the G4 just interpreted everything.

In your situation, here's what I'd try (it's also how I set up my Samsung XPress printers. This is assuming your Brother is a network printer.

Create a new printer, select IP, put in the iP address of the printer. For the protocol, select HP-JetDirect. Give the printer a name and location if you like - but don't name the printer before you put in the IP address, otherwise the IP address will change to the printer name (and vice versa).

Once it's all set, click Add. It'll spin for a bit, but eventually you'll get a box where you can set up the driver you want to use. Dig through that and find the manufacturer's print driver (try that first). Finish up and then try a simple print job.

Thanks for the advice. Sadly, though, that's what I've done. The manufacturer driver is detected and select-able, but when you print to it then, nothing happens. The item appears in the print queue, and just goes away afterward. Seems like I remember some error coming up from inside the driver in the Console app as well, though its been awhile. IIRC, that was why I determined that I thought there was something about the driver that was compiled for x86/64 only.

 

[eyoungren]

Thanks for the advice. Sadly, though, that's what I've done. The manufacturer driver is detected and select-able, but when you print to it then, nothing happens. The item appears in the print queue, and just goes away afterward. Seems like I remember some error coming up from inside the driver in the Console app as well, though its been awhile. IIRC, that was why I determined that I thought there was something about the driver that was compiled for x86/64 only.

Hmmm…does the printer work if you connect it directly?

We had an Epson All-In-One at my old job I could never print to with the Macs. I discovered that when they said 'Windows only' they meant it. I eventually cracked that, but I believe it was a very long time coming. Gutenprint driver.

 

[UH8183]

My G4 Mini sees the printer over my network, lets me go through the print motions and thinks it printed. But nothing prints. I have to use a usb and transfer the file to my M1 mini to print. I'm using a Samsung laser printer.