Printing to an AppleTalk network printer

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Printing to an AppleTalk network printer

I need a serious guru here... someone versed in AppleTalk and Windows XP and maybe CUPS.

My workhorse laser printer is an old HP LaserJet 4MP, circa 1992. Nevertheless it works fine and I want to keep it that way. It's an Appletalk printer which means it only speaks Appletalk. It's connected to my wireless home network via an AsanteTalk bridge. It prints about 4 pages per minute (wow).

If you want to add this printer in OS X, it's easy: it simply shows up as both a shared printer and an Appletalk printer in System Preferences > Print and Fax. Select it and that's pretty much all I need to do. Obviously I've been using this printer since System 7 using its built-in drivers. No other drive software was ever necessary. Like everything Apple, it just works.

I'd like to be able to use this printer from my employer-supplied Windows XP laptop. I'm not well versed in Windows, but I've been able to muddle through setting up networked printers in the past. But I can't seem to find this printer using Window's "add printer" thing.

I've tried entering the URI for this printer which CUPS reports is pap://*/HP%20LaserJet%204MP/LaserWriter. I've tried underscores and spaces instead of %20 but Windows can't find the printer.

Even after getting Windows to recognize the printer I suppose it would only print gibberish unless I could find a way for Windows to speak Appletalk, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Any insight appreciated. Yes I know I can buy a brand new wireless printer for less than a replacement toner cartridge; I'm more motivated by geekdom here.

Next I'll tell you about my Appletalk Imagewriter II.

PB G4 Ti 1 GHz  PB G4 17" 1.33 GHz  iMac DV SE  iMac rev D , Mac OS X (10.4.11),  iPod mini  iPod Shuffle  Appletalk printers  24 years Apple!

Posted on Jan 11, 2009 1:03 PM

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Answer 1

John Galt Author

Level 10

155,822 points

Jan 21, 2009 10:20 PM in response to Ian Keller

Ian Keller wrote:
I was aware of newer Macs autosensing but I didn't realize the AsanteTalk depended on that.

The AsanteTalk is built in a conventional manner in that it expects to be plugged into a switch or hub. That's the normal way of doing things. Apple just makes things convenient by making their computer ports autosense. I guess our Airport Extreme ports don't (though the newer ones might).

As I recall the AsanteTalk included both straight and crossover cables when I bought it years ago. They still sell them, so I suppose there's still a market for Appletalk. From what you determined I now suspect Time Capsule doesn't support it, which is a disappointment since I think it would be a simple code modification not requiring any additional hardware.

When it was connected to the Airport Extreme (spaceship 802.11b/g variety) I wasn't seeing anything with the atlookup command. I tried the simultaneous rebooting/atlookup trick but that didn't work either. So I switched the AppleTalk to ethernet, plugged in directly to my laptop and it saw everything right away. So plugged it back into the Airport Extreme, switched AppleTalk back to Airport and it showed up immediately.

You may find that your AsanteTalk stops operating in a similar manner after a power failure that simultaneously affects both it and your Extreme. Asante devotes a lengthy procedure for addressing that in their FAQ. When I investigated that phenomenon years ago, Asante blamed it on a bug inherent in the Appletalk architecture. The "repeated atlookup while powering up the bridge" technique works for me. You ought not to have to disconnect / reconnect cables each time you have a blackout. Anyway, now that you know it works and what it looks like you'll be able to reconfigure it easily next time.

Not sure if that's clear. ... What I don't know, and I'm too tired to experiment with right now, is what would happen if my laptop were in another room and I was getting my wifi from the TC instead of the AE. I suppose I would not be able to print, for the same reason that the iMac can't.

Perfectly clear, and I would agree with your suspicions. I'm sure given enough thought, you'll come up with a clever architecture that would mitigate the problem.

But thanks to you I'm happily printing remotely with a 13 year old printer.

Got you beat! My ImageWriter II still prints wirelessly from all my computers running TIger. It's over 20 years old and built like a tank. I like my HP too, but it's hard to justify maintaining it when I can buy this wireless laser printer for little more than the cost of an HP LJ 4MP toner cartridge. I'm committed to keeping it operating until that needs replacing, so keep an eye on the thread in my previous post.

Glad it's all working for you!

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Answer 2

John Galt Author

Level 10

155,822 points

Jan 20, 2009 8:30 PM in response to Ian Keller

Actually Ian, I'm getting excellent ongoing support on this subject in a different forum:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8843969

First of all, are you using the 802.11b/g Extreme or the newer 802.11n Extreme? I have heard - *but not verified* - that Time Capsule will not carry Appletalk packets. If that's true, and I hope it isn't, the newer Extreme might not either.

I'll assume you have the earlier Airport Extreme "round" base station like I do. If you've enabled Appletalk on your Airport network, an Extreme will pass Appletalk packets and act as wireless a bridge to its LAN port, so you've configured that correctly.

One thing you might want to double-check is that your Extreme is connected to the Asante bridge with a "crossover" Ethernet cable. Connecting the bridge directly to a computer requires this cable, but an ordinary "straight" patch cable will work on newer Macintoshes like yours because their Ethernet ports are auto-sensing. I'm not 100% sure if your Airport Extreme's LAN port will auto-sense. I've always used a crossover cable so I don't know.

With your AsanteTalk bridge so connected, open a Terminal window and type

atlookup

This polls your network for Appletalk devices and will respond (after a few seconds) with their names and addresses. Your AsanteTalk bridge should appear as one of those devices. So should your Laserwriter. That must work before any further troubleshooting.

If the AsanteTalk bridge doesn't appear, type the above command several times in succession *while powering up the AsanteTalk.* In other words,

atlookup
atlookup
atlookup
atlookup
atlookup

and so forth (you can cut and paste the above into Terminal). The reason for this exercise is to overcome a limitation with either Appletalk or AsanteTalk's implementation of it, I forget which.

With the AsanteTalk bridge connected via Ethernet, and Appletalk enabled over Ethernet, you can do the same in Terminal. Since you know that's working, you'll see what you ought to see when enabling Appletalk over Airport.

The WDS configuration ought not to matter. Appletalk packets will happily travel all over your network provided it's all-Apple (i.e. not D-Link or Linksys, although some of their models may support Appletalk).

I hope you write back to tell me you didn't know about the crossover cable requirement, since if that's not the cause of your problem I may be out of suggestions.

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Answer 3

Jan 26, 2009 2:44 PM in response to John Galt

John, if you're still out there...

I fiddled with the iMac here a bit. I could not find the AsanteTalk/Laserwriter from that iMac over ethernet no matter what I did. Ordinarily I have Airport turned off on that computer because it's wired into the TC. So I tried enabling Airport and connecting to the network that way. Then I enabled Appletalk over Airport and viola, the printer showed up.

So it would seem that a Time Capsule with the latest firmware update can bridge Appletalk packets over wifi but not over ethernet. Strange, and frustrating, but at least I know what's going on now and I can live with it. Though it would be a lot better if it worked the way it is supposed to, for me and everyone else.

Good luck and thanks again for your help.

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Answer 4

Jan 20, 2009 4:21 PM in response to John Galt

Sadly I'm not the guru you need but I'd love some advice on how to get where you are.

I have an old Laserwriter 4/600 that still works well for me. For quite a few years now I've been using it with an AsanteTalk connected directly to the ethernet port on my MacBook Pro. I'm trying to get it working while connected to my Airport Extreme, but so far no luck.

Things I've done that may be relevant:

- Set the Airport Extreme as a WDS Remote (the main base station is a Time Capsule in another room).
- Turned on AppleTalk in the Airport section of the Network System Preference.
- Turned the power on for the printer, Asante and Airport Extreme in every imaginable order

I know that this setup doesn't work with Time Capsule, but I figure I'm OK because my laptop (wireless) and my printer (wired) are both connected to the Airport Express.

If I open the Print and Fax System Preference Pane and try to add a new printer it won't find the Laserwriter in the Local Zone in the AppleTalk section. It was listed as "Idle, Default" with a little green dot but it didn't print that way. I deleted that printer setup but now I can't find it on the network.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Ian

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Answer 5

Jan 21, 2009 9:06 PM in response to John Galt

John, I can't thank you enough. I didn't know about the crossover cable issue though it wasn't quite that simple. I always had it hooked up to my computer directly with a standard ethernet cable. I was aware of newer Macs autosensing but I didn't realize the AsanteTalk depended on that. Luckily I had a crossover cable lying around so I was able to get right to it after your very thorough post.

Anyway, the not-so-simple part was resolved after I connected the AsanteTalk directly to my Macbook Pro. When it was connected to the Airport Extreme (spaceship 802.11b/g variety) I wasn't seeing anything with the atlookup command. I tried the simultaneous rebooting/atlookup trick but that didn't work either. So I switched the AppleTalk to ethernet, plugged in directly to my laptop and it saw everything right away. So plugged it back into the Airport Extreme, switched AppleTalk back to Airport and it showed up immediately. I added the printer and printed successfully without a hitch from that point on.

Something to note... I could not find that printer from my iMac, which is wired directly into the Time Capsule where the cable modem is. Quick network diagram:

Cable Modem
Time Capsule (ethernet) iMac
(wifi)
Airport Extreme (crossover) AsanteTalk/Laserwriter
(wifi)
Macbook Pro

Not sure if that's clear. Basically the iMac is hardwired into the Time Capsule and the Airport Extreme is extending the wifi network created by the TC. The Asante is plugged into the AE and from where I'm sitting in the house my MBP should be connecting to the AE rather than the TC because I'm much closer to it. So for the iMac to reach that printer the signal would have to pass through the TC, and maybe that's where the problem is. (Not that this is really a problem for me since I don't need that iMac to print to the Laserwriter.) I guess the Time Capsule is blocking the AppleTalk packets, as you've heard.

What I don't know, and I'm too tired to experiment with right now, is what would happen if my laptop were in another room and I was getting my wifi from the TC instead of the AE. I suppose I would not be able to print, for the same reason that the iMac can't.

But thanks to you I'm happily printing remotely with a 13 year old printer. That's very much appreciated.

Best regards,
Ian

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Answer 6

John Galt Author

Level 10

155,822 points

Jan 22, 2009 8:40 PM in response to Ian Keller

Ian, I've done some cursory searching and still have no definitive answer about the TC possibly blocking Appletalk. There is at least one anecdote about it working with the newer AEBS(n) however, which I think ought to be functionally similar to the TC. So don't give up on that yet.

I also want to make sure you did the obvious, which is to verify your iMac is configured to allow Appletalk over Ethernet. That would be appropriate for your network configuration.

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Answer 7

Jan 22, 2009 8:50 PM in response to John Galt

From what (little) I read it seems that nobody has been able to get the TC to work with AppleTalk, but I really didn't dig too deeply into old posts. Though people who are having no problems probably aren't posting to the forums.

FYI, I did have AppleTalk enabled over ethernet from the iMac. But I didn't try the atlookup command from there. Nor did I try connecting wirelessly from the iMac, which would probably go through the TC en route to the AE though perhaps it treats that differently.

I'll experiment over the weekend and let you know if I have any success. I'm not terribly optimistic, though the way it's working now is fine for the foreseeable future.

Regards,
Ian

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Answer 8

John Galt Author

Level 10

155,822 points

Jan 23, 2009 6:11 AM in response to Ian Keller

Ian, I dug a little deeper and found a thread that may interest you:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8184819&

In a nutshell, it appears that applying Airport Extreme Update 2008-004 to a Time Capsule running firmware 7.3.x breaks the Time Capsule's ability to bridge Appletalk between the wireless and wired networks.

If you can find a way to undo Update 2008-004 you might gain the ability to print without changing your current network configuration.

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Answer 9

Jan 23, 2009 7:41 AM in response to John Galt

Thanks for that link John, seems like the firmware is the issue alright. Ironically my TC shipped without the problematic firmware but I upgraded it myself when I first set it up a few days ago, prior to when I hooked up the printer to the AE that the TC replaced. But according to the first post (regarding the AE workaround) I might still be able to make it happen. My configuration is exactly what he suggests, it might just require a little tinkering. I'll experiment a bit and if I have any luck I'll be sure to post that here.

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Answer 10

John Galt Author

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155,822 points

Jan 26, 2009 3:49 PM in response to Ian Keller

One could hope that Apple will undo whatever ill it imposed upon us by its firmware and/or security update 2008-004. For what it's worth I already sent them feedback on the issue.

If Apple won't support Appletalk on Apple products, who will?

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Answer 11

Jan 27, 2009 9:40 AM in response to John Galt

Thanks for the link to submit feedback. I just wrote them a note, hopefully enough people will raise the issue to get it fixed. If it worked before I can't imagine it would be very difficult to fix.

My feeling is that if Apple truly cares about being more green, the best thing they could do would be to continue support for legacy products like this. The greenest laser printer is the one that I don't have to throw into a landfill. And since Apple is not in the printer business anymore it's not like I'm denying them any revenue.

Thanks again, John.

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Answer 12

John Galt Author

Level 10

155,822 points

Jan 27, 2009 3:02 PM in response to Ian Keller

Ian Keller wrote:
The greenest laser printer is the one that I don't have to throw into a landfill. ...

Cheapest, too. Green or not, consumers will inevitably gravitate toward the cheapest alternative.

By the way, I now have my HP LaserJet 4MP and my Apple Imagewriter II on my wireless network. Talk about cheap... an Imagewriter ribbon costs less than $5 and lasts forever.

Thanks again, John.

You're welcome!

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