Workaround solution for USB printer sharing
May 19, '02 10:58:58AM
Contributed by: lindz
I've been looking for some time for a way to network our Epson SP 870 colour photo inkjet under OS X. It's been a nightmare - but three months on, I've finally got it working!
We have 18 Macs connected over an Airport Network in our office, all running OS X. Epson's drivers don't support networked printing over TCP/IP, and Apple told me that USB sharing was not available in classic. But it seems it is!
Read the rest of the article for our workaround solution...
Here's what we did...
- Set up each mac in OS 9 to have tcp/ip settings, appletalk on, airport logged onto our network. Installed the EPSON OS9 Driver. Restarted. On the host machine, used the chooser to make the SP 870 available for sharing. Turned on USB printer sharing and made the SP 870 available for sharing.
- On the network macs we then selected the SP 870 in USB printer sharing - and then in the chooser. We changed the Port config in chooser from 'USB Port 1' to 'Shared'.
- Then I checked that all the machines were printing to the printer in OS 9. All good so far. Then, leaving the host in OS 9, we restarted all the networked machines in OS X. In system prefs we altered the Classic preferences to start up classic on Log in.
- Then I opened the 'Applications - Mac OS 9' folder, selected Acrobat Reader 5, changed the app name to 'Print PDF' and did a 'get info' (apple-I) on the app icon. I swaped the Icon for that of the Print Centre in OS X (in the Utilities folder), and checked the 'Open in Classic' tick box.
- I then dragged an instance of the new 'Print PDF' app icon into the dock.
- When people want to print they simply choose 'Print' from what ever os x application they're using, and then choose 'Preview'. In preview they choose 'Save as PDF' and save the PDF to the desk top. To finish printing, they drag the new PDF onto the 'Print PDF' app in the Dock and print from there.
- We then restarted the host machine in OS X, and it still works!
It's crude but it's working for us - and I'm sure most of the steps could be automated with AppleScript.
It's not perfect but there seemed to be no other alternative - until Jaguar (hurry up apple!) it's the best we've got.
Incedentally - don't bother with Canon, we bought an S6300 and a C700 print server, which Canon assured us would work, and we've managed to config it onto the network etc using the setup app (PC only) in Virtual PC, but it won't print remotely. When we rang Canon back, they said that they don't provide support to Mac Networks and suggested that we change to PC. Yeah right.
Good Luck!
[Editor's note: A creative workaround to an existing OS X issue. Jaguar's one-button "Enable USB Printer Sharing" will be a welcome relief for many people!]
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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20020519105858950