Enable AppleTalk printer sharing with Windows

Sep 05, '02 08:39:43AM

Contributed by: William McCallum

There have been lots of printing hints here lately, but none quite solving the following problem: How to print from a Windows XP machine to an AppleTalk LaserWriter attached to a Mac OS X machine. Here's how to do it:

  1. Things you may need to do first:
    In the Sharing Preference Pane, turn on Windows Sharing and Printer Sharing. Configure samba to use cups as explained here on macosxhints. I don't know for sure that all these things are necessary because I haven't tested it without them.

  2. Find out the name CUPS gives your printer.
    It's probably the name you think it is, but substitute the underscore character for a blank space and the letter g for an apostrophe. You can find out for sure by looking in the file /etc/cups/printers.conf (you will need to do this as super user). There should be an entry for your printer; its name occurs after the word Printer at the beginning of the entry.

  3. Find out the IP address or host name of the Mac OS X machine.
    Use the Network preference pane to get this bit of info; I think either of these will do, but I've only tried it with the IP address.

  4. Go to your Windows XP machine and start up the Add Printer Wizard.
    Select "Network printer ..." then "Connect to a printer on the internet ..." and type the following in the space where it asks for the URL:
    http://ip_address:631/printers/name_of_printer
    Substitute the printer name and ip address you found before for "name_of_printer" and "ip_address".
This is mostly gleaned from other hints on macosxhints and from Apple forums, but I haven't seen it all in one place.

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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20020905053943589