Hello,
I just started using Mac OS X today. Have 2 computers with 10.5 Leopard and 1 with 10.2 Jaguar. I think all 3 computers are Power Mac G5's.
I have an HP LaserJet 5 printer. I'm not very familiar with parallel printer ports and cables. And it seems G5's don't have parallel printer ports so I couldn't connect using the parallel printer cable that came with the printer. The G5 has an rj-45, firewire, and usb ports. So, I used a cable to convert the parallel port into a USB port. The cable I used is an ATEN UC-1284B Printer Cable. It's properties are:
- Product ID : 8198 ($2006) |
- Vendor : ATEN UC-1284B |
- Device Speed : Full |
- Power (mA) : 500
Leopard can print to the printer through the USB port and cable. From what I could get from OS X the printer properties are:
- HP LaserJet 5
- Gutenprint V5.1.3
- PPD File Version 5.1.3
Jaguar can't print to the LaserJet 5. In Jaguar I looked at the Printer control center or whatever the printer control center in OS X is called and it sees the LaserJet 5. But, it has a question mark on the name and says "Driver not installed".
Well, after googling I think I found that Jaguar supports the LaserJet 5 out of the box. So, I'm stumped. If it's suppose to support the printer natively why doesn't it just work? Please help. Thanks!
http://h20180.www2.hp.com/apps/Lookup?h_lang=en&h_cc=us&cc=us&h_page=hpcom&lang=en&h_client=S-A-R163-1&h_pagetype=s-002&h_query=laserjet+5&submit.x=8&submit.y=4
There are several version of the printer/installable options so you'll have to narrow it down. Also, printing through the machine running Leopard is fine but will slow down its performance when doing so. You should be able to just connect the printer to a network hub with 1000baseT, turn on appletalk in the printer itself and then connect the computers to the same network. The HP software will allow you to assign the printer a static IP. Once you've done this, you'll want to turn off printer sharing in the System Preferences of each Mac under Network settings.