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John Galt Author

Level 10

147,288 points

Snow Leopard means no more Appletalk

This article alleges that the release of Snow Leopard will end support for Appletalk.

Like WDS, it seems Appletalk is a protocol that Apple wishes would just go away on its own. Unfortunately I use it for two of my printers. When Apple discontinues the few lines of code that drive Appletalk, they'll have to add to a landfill's population.

I am not hopeful that anything the user community can do will save this unfortunate victim of progress, but it's worth a try:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Powerbooks  iMacs  iPods  Airports  Appletalk printers , Mac OS X (10.4.11),  24 years Apple!  "it's" means "it is"  "lose" is a verb  "loose" isn't

Posted on Jul 7, 2009 6:51 AM

194 replies

Cayenne6

Level 1

0 points

Sep 1, 2009 9:36 AM in response to tfjunk

tjfunk -

CUPS will need a PAP to get netatalk to work. Try these instructions. This is how I got Linux to see my Laserwriter 320. The directory structure is different for OS X, but the underlying steps might be the same:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AppleTalk#AppleTalk%20Printing

Hope it helps!

Sep 1, 2009 4:13 PM in response to Cayenne6

This has probably been covered, but I couldn't follow all the technicalities, and would like to be sure:

Can my Apple LaserWriter 320 be made work with Snow Leopard?

AppleTalk will be gone, and the AsanteTalk bridge box will be irrelevant, but will there be some other way to connect the LW 320 with a MacBook Pro / Snow Leopard?

I've continued to use the LW 320 all this time because it's far more solid than any recent printer. It's built to last.

Thank you.

Sep 1, 2009 4:17 PM in response to davlab

This post was helpful, but even after getting my Laserwriter 8500 into my printer list using LPD, I can't get anything to print. The Laserwriter 8500 is networked via ethernet, through a hub, to an Airport Extreme. My Mac Mini and Power Book are both using wireless. Can anyone suggest how to fix this?

eteen

Level 1

30 points

Sep 2, 2009 1:31 PM in response to Matt Wolanski

Hi,

The LN17 is a PCL printer if you do not have the postcript card.

Use any CUPS driver for a PCL printer and you should be OK. I haven't installed Snow Leopard yet so I can't give you the complete how to.

HP 5L is a good exemple of printer driver from cups you could use.

Sep 2, 2009 7:23 PM in response to John Galt

Wow, useful thread. Thanks all, for the comments and information.

I am trying to get "old reliable," my Applewriter 4/600, back into life in the age of 10.6. I'm using a Farallon iPrint and honest-to-God PhoneNet cable connecting to the network. Works fine from the 10.5.x machines I am running, but I want to move to 10.6. I will try to see if it will work with LPD but I cannot for the life of me find a way to see the IP of the print server. I tried typing arp -a in terminal and I get a list of what appears to be all my in-use IPs, but it's not there that I can see.

Can anyone help? Sounds like a golden opportunity for a shareware/commercial software product, an easy to use "fixer" for all us Applewriter using folks.

Sep 2, 2009 9:43 PM in response to Peter Payne

I too have a LaserWriter 4/600 PS running fine in 10.5.8 with a Farallon iPrint adapter and PhoneNet cable connected to the network and would really like to find a way to continue using this printer. Sure, it's slow but it works!

Sep 3, 2009 6:49 AM in response to IronTemple

UPDATE: FYI, when I called Apple Care they had no solution for this. They recommended connecting the printer to a computer running 10.5 or earlier and sharing the printer.

Sep 3, 2009 9:59 AM in response to Richard Ripley

These Printers are Postscript level 1 printers that can be identified and used under the Linux-Foundation Postscript level 1 driver. All these printers are AppleTalk/LocalTalk printers.They also need a converter from AppleTalk-over-Ethernet to AppleTalk/LocalTalk to print in Macs without a round serial/LocalTalk port and/or Macs running Mac OS X.

http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/MacOSX/pslevel1#Printers

LaserWriter
LaserWriter Plus
LaserWriter IINT
LaserWriter IINTX
Personal LaserWriter NT

These are Postscript level 2 printers that do not support LPR/LPD. All these printers are LocalTalk printers. Except for those marked (Ethernet) they also need a converter from AppleTalk-over-Ethernet to AppleTalk/LocalTalk to print from Macs newer than the Beige G3 and with Mac OS X.

Personal LaserWriter NTR
Personal LaserWriter 320
LaserWriter Select 360
LaserWriter 4/600 PS

LaserWriter IIf
LaserWriter IIg (Ethernet)
LaserWriter Pro 600
LaserWriter Pro 630 (Ethernet)
___

Since none of the above printers use LPR/LPD, they will not continue to be useable when AppleTalk-over-Ethernet goes away in 10.6. You can postpone that date by keeping one Mac on an older version of Mac OS X.

If there are other input ports on your printer, it may be useable with a different interface, such as a USB-to-Parallel interface. This would require looking in your printer manual for settings of the switch on the back that change what data types are expected on which ports. (Default output for Mac OS X is Postscript level 2.) Some printers with a parallel port may also accept HP Emulation of PCL, so that a driver for an HP model might be useable with different switch settings.

The LaserWriter 4/600 has only a LocalTalk port, so If you decide to go ALL 10.6, you will need another printer or to fiddle with a solution like netATalk mentioned above.

dbmacdon

Level 1

7 points

Sep 6, 2009 8:32 AM in response to Cayenne6

Perhaps Netatalk could be installed to provide AppleTalk over ethernet again. On the other hand, it seems quite daunting... Since the AppleTalk code exists in Leopard, I wonder if it might be possible to use TimeMachine or Pacifist to extract the necessary AppleTalk components from a Leopard install disc and insert them into Leopard?

jrolland

Level 1

0 points

Sep 6, 2009 1:18 PM in response to Cayenne6

Could you pretty-please post instructions for using netatalk to print other Unix operating systems? It would be very useful information to have.

Cayenne6

Level 1

0 points

Sep 6, 2009 2:05 PM in response to jrolland

These are the instructions I used to install to Linux Mint, a Ubuntu/Debian based distribution. I don't know if it would work under redhat distributions:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AppleTalk#AppleTalk%20Printing

jrolland

Level 1

0 points

Sep 6, 2009 9:48 PM in response to Cayenne6

Cayenne6,

Thanks so much! I see now that you had posted them earlier.

If I could make one more request, could you post where to find the source code (or mayhap even a Snow Leopard binary) of the pap file whose binary is found at <https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AppleTalk?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=p ap>? I would be eternally (or, at least the cost of a new laserwriter :)) grateful!

Thanks again for the prompt reponse!

Pit29

Level 1

10 points

Sep 7, 2009 2:48 AM in response to Cayenne6

That's what I'm hoping for as well!

Proffles

Level 1

0 points

Sep 7, 2009 3:09 AM in response to jrolland

Hello,

Sorry for butting in but the PAP file linked to might make your browser think it's a binary but it is in fact just a plain text shell script - open it in your favourite text editor to see and change it.

Wish it would help me, but I can't get netatalk to compile (either through macports or by hand) unfortunately.

Good luck,

Proffles

dbmacdon

Level 1

7 points

Sep 7, 2009 6:51 AM in response to Proffles

I tried to install Netatalk following instructions at http://netatalk.darwinports.com/ and at http://www.macports.org/. It seems that you have to have Darwin Ports (MacPorts) installed first and to do that you also have to install Xcode tools and X11. So, I installed Xcode tools and X11 from the Snow Leopard install disc (about 2 GB). Then I installed MacPorts 1.8.0 for Snow Leopard. Then I started the Netatalk installation through the terminal. After a number of Unix executables got downloaded, compiled and installed, finally Netatalk got fetched, but then at the very last step through this laughable error:

---> Fetching netatalk
---> Attempting to fetch netatalk-2.0.3.tar.bz2 from http://heanet.dl.sourceforge.net/netatalk
---> Verifying checksum(s) for netatalk
---> Extracting netatalk
---> Applying patches to netatalk
---> Configuring netatalk
Error: Target org.macports.configure returned: AppleTalk has been removed from Mac OS X 10.6+
Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.

So, Netatalk 2.0.3, which I tried to install to get AppleTalk won't configure or compile in Snow Leopard because AppleTalk has been removed from 10.6!! It was an interesting exercise, but a waste of a couple of hours and 2 GB of disk space...

Anyone able to install it successfully, or have any other ideas?

Regards

Snow Leopard means no more Appletalk