[P1] Sharing printers on a Windows network

[Barry Lyden]

I looked into this a while ago and discovered that OS X does not support
using shared windows printers directly. I believe Panther will address this,
but someone who is more familiar with the soon-to-be-released Panther will
have to confirm this.

With Jaguar you still have a couple of options. While not terribly
difficult, they are not trivial for the average non-computer aficionado.
Also, your mileage may vary greatly:

1. You can try to get it working using Postscript emulation & Unix print
services. Check out the following link for step by step instructions:
http://iharder.sourceforge.net/macosx/winmacprinter/

2. You can try the combination of Gimp-Print and Samba. You can download
Gimp-Print from www.sourceforge.net or www.versiontracker.com

3. Buy a print server and move the windows printer to the network.

After much trial and error with software only solutions, I eventually bought
an inexpensive 1-port print server and set it up using IPP. Now all the
computers in my house (3 laptops, 3 desktops, running OS 9, OS X, Win XP,
and Linux) all talk to my Photosmart printer just fine. I use the drivers
from Gimp-Print for my OS X Powerbook and Linux desktop.


Hope this helps,
Barry




On 9/22/03 12:51 PM, "Eric Richardson" <lbyron at comcast.net> wrote:

> Okay, I am out about trying to get some work done in NYC from my usual
> home in Michigan. I am on a network here which has one inkjet printer
> shared off of one of the computers. There is a sub network that the one
> computer is shared off, but all the other Windows machines have no
> trouble seeing it and printing from it no matter what. It is not a
> network printer, it is a shared printer.
> 
> My computer has the drivers for the inkjet installed and when I hook
> directly to the printer it is recognized and prints well. But altho I
> can see all the computers on the network and communicate with them, but
> I can't see or use the shared printer. I don't know why. When I try to
> add it (I use a shared printer over my Appletalk wireless and ethernet
> connections at home), the printer is just not seen. What am I missing?
> What do I need to do? Right now, I have to drop docs on the windows
> machines and print from them. Can anyone help?
> 
> Thanks for your time.
> 
> snow iBook 500 Dual USB w/ 640 Meg RAM, X.2.5