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John Galt Author

Level 10

142,072 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

Sep 7, 2009 9:25 AM in response to John Galt

i've been using older laser printers for years; they work so well that the effort to support them seems like a good sustainability practice; and AppleTalk saves quite a bit of time in configuring a printer, plus adds two-way communication (e.g., the dialog that pops up on the computer that tells you the printer is out of paper, or the automatic sensing of configuration options such as amount of memory installed)

from my past experience setting up the same printers on Mac OS X via IP Printing, this two-way communication has not been supported; can anyone comment definitively on whether IP Printing in Snow Leopard somehow retains the good coupling AppleTalk provided? will netatalk, aside from enabling AppleTalk printing, also add back this two-way communication? does using the printer sharing with a 10.5 machine include this functionality?

Cayenne6

Level 1

0 points

Sep 7, 2009 9:33 AM in response to dbmacdon

Fascinating error message.

I looked on the macports support site and they already have a ticket submitted on that error and it was "fixed" only about 17 hours ago. Apparently netatalk was crashing on install in 10.6 when it was looking for a file called "appletalk.h", so they changed macports to give that error, instead of finding out why it couldn't find appletalk.h. Now, everyone using 10.5 will get this error, instead of installing netatalk.

I'm going to take your message above and post it as a new ticket to macports.org and see if they can resolve this issue.

jrolland

Level 1

0 points

Sep 7, 2009 12:45 PM in response to Cayenne6

OK, I tried installing NetATalk from source on Snow Leopard (depends on Berkeley DB - that's easy to install from source - thank you, Oracle!) instead of from MacPorts. I get the same "error: netat/appletalk.h: No such file or directory" error, so it's not just a MacPorts thing.

If someone who is familiar with the NetATalk project could take a look at making it so it will work on Snow Leopard (either directly from source or via MacPorts), lots of AppleTalk printer users would be very obliged.

Cayenne6

Level 1

0 points

Sep 7, 2009 5:13 PM in response to jrolland

You're right, it's not a MacPorts thing. It's netatalk itself.

I perused the mailing lists that the netatalk developers use and all their discussions are about fixing file sharing (AFP) which did break with Snow Leopard. Seems a LOT of people use netatalk for file servers and time machine on cheap linux boxes.

In fact, when I dug around the FAQ for netatalk, the operating systems it supports are the Linux variants, but limited support in OS X, specifically, file sharing only. As in, netatalk does not support printing in OS X by design. My bad for creating false hope.

So, even though I got netatalk to work on my Linux laptop, the netatalk developer team is not working on getting printing to work with OS X. Come to think of it, it's because they never had to before, appletalk printing wasn't an issue with OS X until 10.6.

I would think that rather than trying to get Apple to add AppleTalk back to 10.6 (not going to happen), our efforts should be in convincing the netatalk developers to add printing (atalkd) to netatalk for OS X as jrolland suggests.

Cayenne6

Level 1

0 points

Sep 7, 2009 5:31 PM in response to Cayenne6

I just added a request to the sourceforge.net netatalk feature page, asking for printing support. A developer there should respond to my request and when they do, I'll post here.

Sep 7, 2009 5:40 PM in response to OzarkMtn

OzarkMtn You are a lucky man (owner of a LaserWriter Select 360).

I have successfully installed my LWS 360 in SnowLeopard. I run it as a network printer (wireless), but you can run it wired as well. What you need is a Print Server with a parallell port connector.

There are a few steps:

1. Put back the ""LaserWriter Select 360"" PPD file in: HD/Library/Printers/PPD Plugins/
(The 10.6 installer removes it)

2. Power up the Print Server and connect to it from your web browser. (192.168.0.1 or something like that). Here you can (manually) assign an IP which will be the IP for the printer. (192.168.0.10). Here are also some other choises for the printer. OK to start the printer.

3. Open system pref.pane "Printers and Fax". Delete the old printer and create a new for the LWS 360. PRINT!

A small oddity with password in 10.6. It seems like WEP 64bit HEX no longer is supported. I had to change to 128 ASCII to get it work.

I hope this will help you.

Sep 7, 2009 5:52 PM in response to Instant_1

instant_1:

That sounds like a great solution!

What kind of printserver is that? Hewlett-Packard maybe? what model?

When you go to set up the printer, what kind does it say it is? {LPR, IP, Jetdirect, something else?}

Does the LaserWriter Select 360 have a selector switch? Do you have to set it to something other than 0?

Sep 7, 2009 6:14 PM in response to Instant_1

Can anyone verify that the Farallon iPrint adapter does indeed generate an IP? I know it must, intuitively, but there's no way to see what the IP is, no test sheet with my Applewriter 4/600, and I couldn't see the print server on the network. Why is there no convenient iApp for doing this stuff, finding IPs on a network and seeing which is what?

Sep 7, 2009 8:13 PM in response to Peter Payne

It does not generate an IP Address. Although it is on the same \[Ethernet] highway as TCP/IP packets, it does not use their protocol or their addressing. Some Wireless Routers throw those AppleTalk packets away as invalid.

Sep 7, 2009 10:14 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanks for the info. I guess I'll leave one machine set up as 10.5 and share the printer through that, using up the toner as fast as possible (of course I have several unopened boxes of toner, wouldn't you know). Probably be done by the time 10.7 rolls around.

dbmacdon

Level 1

7 points

Sep 8, 2009 2:31 AM in response to Cayenne6

I tried another possible AppleTalk software solution - Parallels. I happen to have Mac OS X 10.5 Server in a Parallels Virtual Machine (VM). It contains AppleTalk. So, I thought I might be able to "see" my AppleTalk-only printer (Apple Laserwriter 4/600 PS) through its usual Ethernet-AsanteTalk bridge connection. Unfortunately, I've tried all the Parallels Networking options available (shared, bridged, host-only) and none will allow the 10.5 VM to see or connect to the printer. Maybe I'm doing something wrong? Any other ideas?

Regards

Cayenne6

Level 1

0 points

Sep 8, 2009 10:58 AM in response to Cayenne6

The netatalk development people have already responded to my request for printer support:

"Wont fix. If you need lecacy protocols use a legacy OS."

So, don't look to netatalk for a fix, either.

Looks like I won't be going to 10.6 as the replacement cost for my laser printer and toner cartridges is too high.

edharson

Level 1

100 points

Sep 10, 2009 1:20 PM in response to Richard Ripley

Well I have the same problem, and I don’t want to dump my perfectly working LaserWriter Select 360.

I was using this printer on my network via a Farallon EtherMac iPrint Adapter. This allowed me to use Localtalk (AppleTalk).

Since Snow Leopard does not support AppleTalk and my printer (which does an excellent job printing) has both serial and parallel ports, I purchased a USB to Parallel (Centronics CN36 Male / IEEE1284) cable and now can print using one of the USB ports on my Mac Pro. Hope this helps.

JDW1

Level 1

65 points

Sep 11, 2009 7:58 PM in response to dbmacdon

Wouldn't a vintage Mac OS emulator such as SheepShaver or Mini vMac work since they allow you to run older version of the OS which fully support AppleTalk?

I would think that such emulators would also restore the ability to write to HFS (not just HFS+ which is all 10.6 supports) and even MFS volumes.

http://sheepshaver.cebix.net/
http://minivmac.sourceforge.net/

Sorry for not providing the testing myself, but I have not yet upgraded to 10.6.

Sep 12, 2009 12:26 PM in response to davlab

Hi, just followed DavLab's directions, get the print screen, but I then get a 'busy, will try again in 10 sec' error message.

Any thought?

TiA

Snow Leopard means no more Appletalk