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Helpful answers
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Jun 18, 2015 8:33 AM in response to faturnerby Allan Jones,I found this:
https://www.tonercartridgedepot.com/apple-laserwriter-8500-4408-d.html
Not cheap.
Apple never made their printers. They had them made by big printer companies like HP and Canon. We have a LaserWriter 4/600PS that uses an HP cartridge. Try looking over the printer to see if any identifying tags point to the company that made it. Also look at older name-brand printer images to see if one matches.
Information on this site:
https://www.priceless-inkjet.com/cartridges.AppleLaserWriter8500.html
suggests that the printer is made by IBM:
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Jun 18, 2015 9:17 AM in response to faturnerby Allan Jones,I did some more research. To what Mac and OS version do you plan to connect this printer? I looked in the Printer support folders on two of our Macs, one with 10.9.4 and the other with 10.10.3, and it seems Apple no longer provides built-in support for any of its old printers.
Support software for older equipment was once available on an obscure Apple web page but, in their infinite wisdom, Apple no longer allows access to it.
So drivers may be a problem. If you find drivers, plan on using the printer's Ethernet port, not tho two other connections.
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Jun 26, 2015 6:40 AM in response to Allan Jonesby faturner,Thanks for your reply. The 8500 was one of the last printers Apple made. It has a Xerox/Fugi print engine that was also used in the IBM infoprint 20. I found a remanufactured cartridge on ebay so I'm going to try that?
I have it connected to an iMac running Lion. Lion still has all of the LaserWriter PPD's. I connected it to a Color Classic running System 7.5 so I could use the Printer Utility and set an IP address. Reconnected to the iMac through ethernet and set it up as an IP printer. Works great!
New problem: it has over 200 fonts in ROM, most of them I don't have on my computer. Now I'm looking for original install disks so I can get the screen fonts. Any suggestions?
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Jun 26, 2015 10:42 AM in response to faturnerby Allan Jones,New problem: it has over 200 fonts in ROM, most of them I don't have on my computer. Now I'm looking for original install disks so I can get the screen fonts. Any suggestions?
I saw that. Unfortunately, without access to the old Apple downloads, we are short on resources. I can ask some of the other senior helpers if they can provide some suggestions.
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Jun 28, 2015 5:59 PM in response to faturnerby Kurt Lang,The LaserWriter 8500 has 117 built-in PostScript Level 3 fonts, and 19 TrueType fonts. A full list of fonts on the printer's firmware is here.
A thing to note here though is that you don't need any of those same desktop fonts to use the printer. Just the PPD and a way for the OS you're using to communicate with it. The purpose for embedded fonts is simply to speed things up. The PPD knows which fonts are on the printer. So if a document you send to the printer uses any of those, then it doesn't bother to download the fonts from the computer to the printer, and instead uses the embedded fonts.
So the real issue is just getting the printer working. After that, use any fonts you want.
