HP Color LaserJet 1600

Basically since it's one of HP low priced printers they created it without any brains. They only made drivers for windows that do all the thinking for the printer when it comes to printing. Something about it needing a winbox. There are a few ways around not having drivers for this printer but they require a lot of tinkering and installing things such as ghostscript. My suggestion to you is to keep loooking online to see if there have been any updated CUPS drivers that work with leopard and this printer. We can't be the only two people with this problem.

I found a work around.

It's not exactly perfect and the color looks awful... but it works.

All of the information can be found at, http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/MacOSX/foo2zjs


In summary

You'll need to download:

http://www.openprinting.org/download/printdriver/macosx/foo2zjs-1.1-UB.dmg

http://www.linuxprinting.org/macosx/downloads/foomatic-rip-3.43.2.15.ppc.dmg
and
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/gimp-print/espgs-7.07.1.ppc.dmg?download


I started by running the installer for ghostscript, then the installer called foomatic-RIP.dmg.

Lastly I ran the installer foo2zjs. When it finished a terminal window opened and I ran through the instructions listed there. I chose the option for the 1600 and then pressed enter.


Once all three installers have been ran open up print utility from system utilities. The printer should show up and choose the foomatic driver on it's own. Once the printer is installed you'll have b&w printing.





To enable the icky color go to this web address. http://localhost:631/

choose the printers tab

choose set printer options

under color mode choose color over monochrome.



Now color printing should work from your HP Color Laserjet 1600. Good luck!

Hi and thank you for your instructions. I made the mistake and bought this **** printer. I can't belief that a company like HP don't deliver an apple driver. That's just stupid. Is it so difficult to implement a little bit of stupid code or made a global driver? Now i hope your solution works still under 10.3.

Gurix

I just received this printer as a gift for Christmas, and was totally disapointed by the fact that HP was not supporting any other OS than Windows for this particular model.

With the recent popularity of OSes like Mac OS X and Ubuntu for home users, I can't believe HP are sticking to the Windows only mentallity ! This is not a corporate printer!

I tried the open source driver solution, but as previously mentioned, the colors are... well... totally wrong !

I will for sure return this printer to the store, but I don't know if I'll spend the extra 80$ to get the 2600N that supports OS X with it's integrated network printing server.

I also was fooled by HP believing that of course the printer would work with OSX.
Anyway, I followed the instructions from Craigverse and for my iMAC G5 with 10.4.11 it worked fine.
Even the colors are OK as far as I can judge.
THANKS!!

Hi Craigverse, I hope you see this.
Apple support directed me to your discussions item concerning a driver solution for a HP Colour LaserJet 1600.
I followed your instructions and have managed to get my printer to work but only in mono. Many thanks for that.
Was there another step to take after setting the colour mode under localhost:631?

It's not exactly perfect and the color looks awful... but it works.

A new version of Ghostscript has been posted at OpenPrinting that should help with the color rendition. I suggest that you upgrade to GPL Ghostscript 8.61. You can download it from the Mac OS X foo2zjs page at http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/MacOSX/foo2zjs or from http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/MacOSX/foomatic

Matt

hi matt
have you tried printing with this new version? i haven't bought an hp color lj 1600, yet. would like to know if the color issue is still there, before i get this printer for my mac.

iamnothere wrote:
hi matt
have you tried printing with this new version? i haven't bought an hp color lj 1600, yet. would like to know if the color issue is still there, before i get this printer for my mac.

I have used the new version of Ghostscript but not with the LaserJet 1600. I do not have that printer. I am just responding to the color issue based on what others have said about the older version of Ghostscript and what the developer of the foo2zjs drivers has in his notes on the driver.

In general, I do not recommend the purchase of a printer unless it has native support from the manufacturer. Third party drivers can be excellent but they seldom equal the output quality of drivers manufacturers issue. HP does not provide Mac OS X drivers for this printer.

Matt

I have tried this and the HP 1600 printer will only print in black ink. I hope someone can come up with a better solution.

dawa106 wrote:
I have tried this and the HP 1600 printer will only print in black ink. I hope someone can come up with a better solution.

Did you check to make sure that you had Color mode selected under *Printer Features* in the print window? The default for this printer is to print monochrome.

Did the printer produce color output using an earlier version of Ghostscript? I am trying to determine if it is the version of Ghostscript or problems in general with the printer/driver.

Matt

Matt Broughton wrote:

dawa106 wrote:
I have tried this and the HP 1600 printer will only print in black ink. I hope someone can come up with a better solution.

Did you check to make sure that you had Color mode selected under *Printer Features* in the print window? The default for this printer is to print monochrome.

Did the printer produce color output using an earlier version of Ghostscript? I am trying to determine if it is the version of Ghostscript or problems in general with the printer/driver.

Another thing to check is to make sure that you have the color (.icm) files installed. In the Finder, use the Go menu. Select *Go to Folder*. Enter the path /usr/local/share/foo2hp/icm and click Go. Are the files km2430_0.icm, km2430_1.icm and km2430_2.icm present?

Matt

Matt

I tried the path that you provided and it doesn't work for me.

I did have color mode selected. I could not get the gimp driver to work at all either.

Thanks much for trying to help though. I can still use the printer for B&W printing and dump files to my old Dell laptop for color if I get in a bind. Ugh!

Dave

dawa106 wrote:
I tried the path that you provided and it doesn't work for me.

If the /usr/local/share/foo2hp/icm path did not work for you, you do not have the color .icm files installed. Go back to the foo2zjs disk image. Inside the Helpers folder, there is a script you can double click to InstallPrinterExtras. It will lead you through the process of getting and installing the necessary color files. You should then be able to print in color.

If you have any question as to whether the script was successful, copy and paste the contents of the Terminal window output into a reply for diagnosis.

Matt

Matt

Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

You just made my day and night.

It did print color but the trick is in the print setup window that opens when you go to print a picture. You have to go to the printer features pull down and open that dialog window. It will always default to monochrome. Change that to color. Print once to be sure it works. Then do it over again but save the preset, in the print window, as a name like "1600 Color" so you can always print the 1600 to the color preset easily.

Thanks a bunch. I am totally a computer dunce but managed to get this done.

Dave