[X Newbies] Sharing a printer

[Alex]

On Thursday, Jan 22, 2004, at 23:32 Canada/Eastern, Ken Poppers wrote:

> I have 2 iMacs and one printer.  I want to share using USB without 
> unplugging and plugging back in ad nauseum.  Is there a dohickey for 
> taking 2 USB cables down to one?  Will this FUBAR the printer or 
> computers?

There are several USB switches out there, some manual, some automatic. 
They are designed to work with PCs, and none work well with Macs 
(automatic ones don't work at all). However, I shouldn't be surprised 
if there were somewhere a USB switch designed for the Mac, but I 
strongly doubt it would be cost-effective.

Be that as it may, you need neither a switch nor to fiddle with USB 
cables; all you need is, (a) connect your Macs to a network, (b) 
connect your printer to one of your Macs, and (c) share your printer 
over the network. Presumably, (a) and (b) are already taken care of; as 
for (c), search the Mac Help for "sharing printer" and you'll get the 
instructions on how to do it.

> One computer is a 17" flat screen running 10.3.2 and the other is an 
> older DV SE running 9.2 (and sometimes 10.2.8)

Printers shared on OS X are not visible to Macs running OS 9. You can 
still share the printer with OS 9 Macs through the Classic enivronment. 
However, I've seen all sorts of quirks when sharing printers in a mixed 
OS X - OS 9 environment; moreover, I hate running Classic. In your 
shoes, I'd stick to sharing the printer in OS X, and resign myself to 
not having access to the printer when running OS 9.

f