Mac Clue Sought.

[tyggerjai]

So.
We have a couple of printers in the house, but only one of them is really suitable for bulk, on-demand work. The others are effete, modern, finicky hand-fed things.
There's a catch. The bulk one is the Mac printer.
Now, the interweb is full of solutions for getting Macs to print to other platforms. Samba, netatalk, whatever.

But it's curiously silent on the topic of getting a *nix box printing to a Mac.

Either this is because it's so trivial no-one mentions it, or because it's tentacular arcana of which man was not meant to wot.

Since I need to do it, it's almost certainly the latter.

The mac is a powermac 7200, currently running os9 and hooked up to the localnet via Ethertalk. It'll happily ftp/ssh to any other box on the net, so it's certainly happy networking wise.
What I need to do is export it's printing capability to the central linux server so everything else can then just use samba/lpd to print to the linux box, which will then send things to the mac.

Ideas, anyone?

sol.
.

Comments

try this...

[wico.livejournal.com]

It seems that the procedure is to put appletalk in the kernel, install the netatalk package, set up a printcap entry through netatalk and share it with the rest of the world with samba. Try this article:
http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1999-04/lw-04-uptime-p3.html

Re: try this...

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

Well, we're getting there.
A) and B) are fine - atalkd is running.
However....

kittling:/home/solitaire# nbplkup
kittling:/home/solitaire#

That should return a list of stuff we can print to, as I understand it.

So yes, if you'd like to reach over to macavity and make sure it's sharing it's printer ... ;)

Then we can get on with paprc stuff.

sol.
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Re: try this...

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

Hey look, rabbit's awake.

kittling:/home/solitaire# nbplkup
sphinx:AFPServer
sphinx:TimeLord
sphinx:netatalk
sphinx:Workstation


It still doesn't help me print though :)

sol.
.

[fraerie.livejournal.com]

what printer is it? does it have it's own network card? if so, it can sit on an ethernet network all by itself, without a mac attached.

some of the later printers support IP printing, I can forward you the utility to manually set the IP address of the printer (assuming compatible).

re: printing under UNIX, I know that to print to LaserWriters (Apple laser printers) under OS X they are using CPS printing - which is a *NIX thingy anyway. I would expect that as long as you can see the printer, it shouldn't be too hard. Most of them accept postscript dumps - not so sure about PCL.

[fraerie.livejournal.com]

sorry, meant CUPS printing

it's supposed to be some kind of generic/universal print engine for Unix

but the first question as to which model still applies

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

I'm familiar with CUPS, certainly.
If the machine was running OS X, I'd be laughing - it's all Unix under the hood, and I'd be right in my comfort zone.
Alas, the 7220s are unlikely ever to run OS X :)
And I believe the printer needs a Mac - I haven't actually looked at it's underside closely, but it's an HP desktoppy thing.

sol.
.

[fraerie.livejournal.com]

ah-ha, herein lies the confusion, when you said mac printer, I thought you meant an Apple branded printer, not a mac-compatible printer. There be a big difference.

It appears you have a jet direct box - in which case you need to set up jet direct ports and then print to IP of Jet Direct.

The 'beauty' of Apple network printers is that they don't need a Mac around to do the printing - so you could ignore the PM7220 (my preferred option as they are a hybrid POS - the least mac-like mac Apple ever made).

If you could look either on the'underside' or even as to what model patch is on the outside front cover, I may be able to give you a better idea of where to head next. Different models have different configs, and therefore different capabilities. If it's a HP printer, you would need to check out HPs tech support pages for printer sharing - not Apple's.

Ah, ok :)

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

It's an HP Deskwriter.
I'm pretty sure it only talks to Macs, but I could be wrong - I'll look at it closer tonight.
I think I may have found an LPDaemon for Mac, though, which would presumably solve the problem.
The main problem at the moment is that even with filesharing turned on, the printer doesn't seem to have "share me" options. We've switched AppleTalk on for it, but we still can't "see" it on the network, even though we can see other bits of the Mac.
(The JetDirect box is a red herring - it's completely unrelated to either the Mac or the printer. Thoguh if it talks to the printer, it's probably a much easier option than dicking with the Mac... :)

So yeah, if the printer talks to other things (parallel, TCP/IP, or even serial), I'm laughing, but I had thought it only talked to the Mac.

And your opinion on the 7220 seems to be a common one. Thank goodness it was cheap :) Any idea if it'll take standard PC RAM of the era? I suspect it'd be a lot more pleasant to work with if it had more RAM...

sol.
.

Re: Ah, ok :)

[fraerie.livejournal.com]

OK, DeskWriters are inkjet printers with a DB9 serial connection - typically no Parallel or other ports. As a general rule they are the lobotomised childer of HP. They speak AppleTalk and that's about the only clever bit to them. They are typically 5+ years old, as HP started selling dual port DeskJets about the time that the PM7220 came out.

Depending on the version of the driver you are using, the option to share the printer in found in the 'Chooser' (Apple Menu item), when configuring the printer - it is not handled via the Networking or AppleTalk control panels. It is then 'published' like a shared network drive, you have to first see the host computer before you can see the printer.

If you find that it is a DeskJet or an LaserJet, and it has a parallel port, connecting it to a JetDirect box will allow you to see it on the mac as a Network printer automatically - or to see it via a JetDirect manually configured port on a WinDoze box. I assume that Linux has drivers for seeing JetDirect ports. I have no Linux experience - so anything I say re Linux is an out and out assumption. M'okay.

Most of the LaserWriters with a "M" in their model name is considered 'Mac-compatible'. e.g. 4MP. Typically the "M" varients have postscript loaded - BTW "M" does not actually stand for Macintosh, that is just a coincidence. Most of the "N" varients have an ethernet (JetDirect) card internally, these models can all be seen by Macs using the approriate driver, and can act as a stand-alone network device. Typically they have sufficient smarts to act as a low level print server - i.e. handling multiple print requests from multiple sources. They have little or no smarts regards tracking and filtering print jobs based on permissions.

There were AppleTalk based print spooler servers available, these would publish a print queue over the network, but require an AppleTalk Server to run, I'm unsure as to whether the software is still available. As an alternative to an JetDirect box, there are AppleTalk bridges availabe - we have one from Assante for broadcasting our LocalTalk laserwriter over our Ethernet network. They cost $200+ as they are a specialty item.

hope some of this helps.

Re: Ah, ok :)

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we poke the chooser and it just says "I'm a deskwriter!". We switch appletalk on for it, and it's still not on the net. It has no other options except a ... "Description" button, I think. Which we press, and it lets us tell it it's some other kind of deskwriter, but says nothing about sharing :)

Ah well.
And Ben can confirm that it really is a DEskWriter and it really does only have db9. So the JetDirect box is out.

So at the moment it looks like we might have to put an LPR daemon on the Mac (we found the software somehwere, we think), have the linux box talk to it via netatalk, and have all the other boxes print to the linux box via LPR/Samba.

It's a kludge, but it might just work ....

I'm tempted to have the PM serve merely as an appletalk router, and put the actual printer on the Mac Classic :) If we're going to dick around with this stuff, might as well make it as weird as possible :) Then the Classic can sit in the corner telling us the time and printing for us, with the PM doing nothing but shift packets. Seems oddly fitting.

sol.
.

Re: Ah, ok :)

[fraerie.livejournal.com]

there is a piece of softare called "Apple LocalTalk Bridge" which may help you out, it would allow the PM7220 to AppleTalk over both serial & ethernet simultaneously.

'LocalTalk' is 'AppleTalk' over serial
'EtherTalk' is "AppleTalk' over ethernet
'AppleTalk' is the protocol - just trying to be clear here - documentation often unclear about this.

There is also a version called "Apple LaserWriter Bridge", the LW version supports one printer, the TL version supports up to 6 devices, being computers or printers. The LT version was commercial software, the LW version was free.

This will only work if it is an 'AppleTalk' printer - which means it has minimal smarts for communicating with computers. The original DeskWriters need the computer to process the print file, and would just accept packets - without distinguishing which job it was for.

People used to share these out using a serial switch box. Manually switch to which computer is currently wanting to print - 'cos the printer too dumb to know whose talking to it.

Check which version of the driver you are using for the printer - use the latest version which will work with the OS installed on the PM7220, there 'should' be a 'setup printer' option which allows you to share the printer. Some versions of the OS have a specific system extension required to allow printer sharing. I also have QuickDrawGX rattling around in my brain at present. Avoid GX like the plague, it was as buggy as hell, and all the Apple people I knew used to disable it when they weren't running GX demos.

will switch off brain now for awhile

Re: Ah, ok :)

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

It seems to be talking out both ends already - we had it hooked up to the local net via a PCI ethernet card *and* a Mac Classic via serial, and it seemed to be talking fine. Not routing, though, if that's what you mean, but then I don't think the Classic understands the concept of "network" terribly well. Though yeah, in theory, it should be able to use the 7220 as a gateway to the rest of the world.

We'll poke drivers for the printer, but in the meantime we seem to have found an LPD for Mac that accepts network jobs - it needs the appropriate PostScript-to-DeskWriterStuff (PCL? Apple proprietary PCL?) converters, but it seems to be handling plain text just fine. And if we shove everything through the linux box first, it can do the conversion via apsfilter and then send it to the Mac LPD and say "Just print it", I guess.

sol.
.

Re: Ah, ok :)

[fraerie.livejournal.com]

PCL is all HP, through and through

Apple uses QuickDraw (and the abortion of QuickDraw GX - which will now never be mentioned again) or Adobe Postscript. Under OS X it uses Quartz which is an onscreen Postscript varient - hence allowing for print to PDF embedded in the OS without additional software.

Other than the chooser routing the traffic (port/netwrok type) and the Print Monitor which only manages the queues, all processing is done by the driver - gain an HP thingy, unfortunately you will need to accept at some point that the DeskWriter is a somewhat dimwitted printer that is only mac-ish by virtue of a DB9 serial port - all else is in the hands of HP, a company who is notoriously bad at supporting Mac drivers, especially for superceed printers. Having previously reported to them that their drivers would break at a certain OS upgrade, their response was "who cares - it's only a mac".

*shrug*

PM7220 = PM4400

[fraerie.livejournal.com]

If looking for info ion the PM7220, you need to know that in the US it was sold as the 4400 (bad luck name in Asia, hence name change).

It has no RAM on the board, and has 3 slots. It uses 168-pin DIMM 3.3 V EDO RAM.

Slot 1 accepts single bank DIMMs only, the combined maximum is 160Mb. Recommend matching slot 2&3 for speed and capacity. Accepts 8, 16, 32 or 64 Mb DIMMs.

hope that helps.

Re: PM7220 = PM4400

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I found a spec sheet with all that.
I just don't know if 108-pin 3.3 V EDO DIMM RAM is the stuff we have lying around :)

sol.
.

You're going about it all wrong.

[longi.livejournal.com]

There is a solution. An easy one.
A web managed one.

We have the software. There shall be printing.

Installation pending.

Re: You're going about it all wrong.

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

Well, actually, I finally poked Ben into going down the road and getting the cartidge for the IBM refilled, so soon yes soon we will have Great Big Printing Goodness. Probably hooked up to the JetDirect if I can crack^W remember the password.

sol.
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