finding printer for a G3 serial port

Is it possible to find a printer to work with a G3 that does not have USB ports? Just serial ports.

Are they still made or is it possible to get something to convert serial to a USB printer?

Thanks,

Mary Lou

iMac G5, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Nov 18, 2007 8:00 PM

18 replies

Mary Frost Author

Level 1

111 points

Nov 19, 2007 8:04 PM in response to Don Rieg

Thanks, Don, for your input. I've ordered a USB card with 2 USB ports which I am sure will be plenty for the use it will be put to. The G3 and G4 that my brother owns both have Zip drives and he is currently carrying data between them that way.

It will be much easier to find a USB printer that will fit his needs. He occasionally wants color when he creates homemade greeting cards. He is now 83 and the entire family treasures the simple cards he has created in the past using "Print Artist". Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a version for Mac OSX so he will be able to continue using his older version on the G3 running OS 9.2. This will please him and the rest of us who receive those treasures.

I will hope that all goes well when the USB card arrives. I have installed one in the past on my old G3 so I hope I can do it again. As you can see in this string, Grant has provided me with good information to carry out the task.

Mary Lou

Don Rieg

Level 2

490 points

Nov 20, 2007 1:08 PM in response to Mary Frost

Hi Mary,

Sounds like a good plan, be sure that the printer will be compatible with your brothers OS. Part of my reliance on the old SW 1200 is based on the fact that the big print-on-CD's etc. color printer is only compatible with OS X.

Good Luck!
Don Rieg

Nov 20, 2007 2:44 PM in response to Don Rieg

I would just like to provide some useful advice on the issue of availability of greeting card software. You could upgrade the Beige G3 to a Sonnet ZIF G3 500 MHz upgrade & 768 MBs of RAM. MacKiev offers a piece of desktop publishing software called The Print Shop. It is for Macs running Mac OS X 10.2 or later. If you upgrade the Beige G3 to 10.3.9 with the upgrades I suggested it would be able to run The Print Shop adequately.

The minimum requirements for the software according to MacKiev are a G3 350 MHz or faster with 256 MBs or more of RAM. Even 512 MB of RAM would be adequate too. 10.3.9 can be installed on a Beige G3 using XPostFacto. I have used Print Shop Deluxe on my family's Tandy 1000HX back in the 80s.

I also used a trial version of it on a PC running Windows 3.11 WFW that eventually got upgraded to Windows 95. Even with our dot matrix printer back in the 80s we were able to print party banners with ease. Our Gateway P5-90 which ran Windows 3.11 WFW & eventually Windows 95 was able to print to our HP DeskJet 540C & create professional looking greeting cards using the trial version of Print Shop.

I'd recommend you get a modern printer. I would recommend the one I use. I have a Epson Stylus CX-4800 All In One printer. It has individual Black, Cyan, Magenta & Blue ink cartridges. This helps you save money by only replacing individual ink cartridges.

Installing a Sonnet Tempo Trio Card would allow you to take full advantage of the Stylus's CX-4800's USB 2.0 capability. This card is a bargain at $150. It has a ATA-133 controller, USB 2.0 controller & FireWire 400 controller all integrated into one PCI card. This is great as it allows one PCI card to do the work of what would normally be three separate PCI cards.

Upgrading to 10.3.9 should also make the Beige G3 much more stable too. All the Mac OS X geeks in the forums agree that 10.3.9 is the most stable release of Mac OS X Apple ever released. Our original eMac 700 with Combo Drive with 1 GB of PC133 RAM happily runs 10.3.9 with ease.

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finding printer for a G3 serial port