Tag Archives: printer

Old School Mac [5] : can I share the printer of my pre-OSX Mac to my network ?

Posted on by
Reply

— THIS IS A REPOST FROM LONG WAY BACK ; JUST FOR ENTERTAINMENT — ORIGINALLY POSTED ON MACOSX.NL (a.k.a. ONE MORE THING) IN 2004

Question : Can I share the Epson printer that is connected to my PowerPC running OS8.6 on my network so I can use it from my iMac ?
Answer : If your Epson-printer is a USB-printer, and your iMac is on OSX (preferably 10.3 Panther), then you would be better of to plug the printer into your iMac and share it to your network and your old PowerPC-Mac from there…
If you have a iMac with OSX 10.3, you will also have an installer-CD of OS9…  use that to upgrade your PowerMac from OS8.6 to OS9 ; that will make your network more compatible… Note : you can run OS9 on all PowerMacs, for more info on that :

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25114

Griffin Technologies has made some adapters that might be of use in your case :

CAUTION ! : do extensive research to make sure that these Giffin-adapters are compatible with your Mac !!

Again : if you are really sure you want to make this work, upgrade to OS9. There is no guarantee that things will work, but it’s a fact that OSX has better network-compatibility  with OS9 / OS9.1 / OS9.2 than with any prior version of MacOS…

Some other links that you might want to have a look at :

  • Three Macs and a Printer :
  • Low End Mac :
  • Great Ideas for Old Macs :

http://weitzman.net/classicmacs/

the original post(s) can be found here :

http://www.onemorething.nl/community/topic/printer-power-pc-via-netwerk-naar-i-mac-osx

Old School Mac [3] : will my printer work with OSX ?

Posted on by
Reply

— THIS IS A REPOST FROM LONG WAY BACK ; JUST FOR ENTERTAINMENT — ORIGINALLY POSTED ON MACOSX.NL (a.k.a. ONE MORE THING) IN 2004

Question : Will I be able to use my WindowsPC’s printer on my new Mac ? Mine is a HP DeskJet 916.

Answer : Yes – the general rule is : any printer that you can connect to your OSX-Mac, will be useable (a least partially) from within OSX

About the meaning of “any printer that you can connect to your OSX-Mac” in the sentence above :

To connect a printer to a OSX-Mac, you need to connect it using a USB- or UTP/Ethernet-cable ; printers that can only be connected using a Parallel PC-printerport will therefore not do…

In this case it’s about a HP DeskJet 916 (HP calls it the “DJ916”) ; that one is included in the so-called DJ9xx-range… those ones are compatible with an OSX-Mac, but when using older versions of OSX you will probably need to use a ‘detour’ using the UNIX-base of OSX combined with the Linux-drivers by HP ; follow these links for more info :

http://www.allosx.com/1034107267/index_html http://hpinkjet.sourceforge.net/productssupported.php http://www.linuxprinting.org/tylerb/hpijs/

That last link is to the actual HPIJS for MacOSX, but be aware ! : do read the instructions and keep a copy of them for future reference before you do any install !

Note : using MacOSX 10.3 Panther your printer will be compatible if it is listed here :

http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/printers.html

the original post(s) can be found here :

http://www.onemorething.nl/community/topic/hp-printer-op-mac