[X Newbies] USB to Ethernet

[Randy B. Singer]

Chris Walker said:

>I have the offer of an Epson 1290 A3 printer which I would like to add to
>my home ethernet network.  It comes with Parallel and USB ports and AFAIK
>Epson do not offer an ethernet option or adaptor.
>
>Has anyone any experience of USB/Parallel to ethernet adaptors?  I know
>there are some around - HP do one for about £150 UK, which seems excessive.


What you are talking about is a USB print server, and by and large, even 
if they are sold as being Macintosh compatible, they tend not to work 
with a Macintosh, especially if your printer is not a Postscript printer.

You can, of course, use OS X's built-in USB Printer Sharing:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=152247
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=151986

There is also a relatively new alternative.  It is called a "USB Server" 
and it works quite well with a Mac.  The only downside is that it won't 
allow multiple Macs to access a peripheral simultaneously, and if you try 
to, for instance, issue simultaneous print commands, it will not allow 
you to spool a job and have it automatically assigned a priority.

See:
Keyspan USB server
http://keyspan.com:16080/products/usb/server/
http://www.everythingusb.com/hardware/index/Keyspan_USB_Server.htm



Randy B. Singer
Co-Author of: The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th and 6th editions)

How To Deal With Common OS X 10.3 Panther Problems
http://www.macattorney.com/panther.html