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bigglesb

Q: Can an Apple Stylewriter 1200 & StylewriterII + Mac OSX 10.6.3 connect?

On one of those happy days I have just been given about 50 unused black ink cartridges "BJ BC-01" as used in my old Stylewriters. I still have both Stylewriters in good condition but unused for years. Is there a USB to serial adapter on the market that can be used to connect an iMac running OSX 10.5.3 so that I can print routine b & w pages and use up these many ink cartridges?

I have an old Keyspan usb to serial adapter part no USA-28X but that does not seem to work.

Ideas please.

iMac i5 27", Mac OS X (10.6.3)

Posted on Apr 27, 2010 2:59 AM

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Q: Can an Apple Stylewriter 1200 & StylewriterII + Mac OSX 10.6.3 connect?

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  • by bigglesb,

    bigglesb bigglesb Apr 27, 2010 1:17 PM in response to bigglesb
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 27, 2010 1:17 PM in response to bigglesb
    Here is the reply from Tripplite ..... there seems to be a driver issue still ....


    There is good reason why we sell more Mac USB serial adapters than any other company. We've been making PCI serial cards and USB serial adapters for Mac OS for more than 10 years!

    Our USB Twin Serial Adapter is recommended by dozens of serial device manufacturers and has been certified by Apple for use with Final Cut Pro.

    Key Features

    Plugs into a USB port on your Mac
    Provides two RS-422 ports for connection to serial devices
    Supports data rates up to 1 Mbps
    Draws power from the USB connection -- a power adapter in not required
    Has been qualified by Apple, Avid and others for connection to video decks
    Supports use of multiple adapters on one Mac
    System Requirements

    Macintosh:

    An available USB port
    Mac OS 8.6 or greater
    Mac OS X (10.2.8, 10.3.9, 10.4 or greater)
    For use with RS-232 and RS-422 serial devices including modems, graphics tablets, video decks, serial PDAs, serial printers, GPS devices, and medical/scientific instrumentation. Does not support AppleTalk/Local Talk. Some serial devices, including many serial printers, do not have drivers for Mac OS X and therefore will not operate under Mac OS X. Check with the serial device manufacturer to confirm that Mac OS X is supported. (For Epson Stylus Printers, use our USB Parallel Printer Adapter if running Mac OS X.)

    Package Includes

    Adapter (USA-28XG) with built in USB cable
    CD with driver software and user guide
  • by bigglesb,

    bigglesb bigglesb Apr 28, 2010 5:14 AM in response to bigglesb
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 28, 2010 5:14 AM in response to bigglesb
    nd a little more info from Entrix Software ...

    I am sorry to report that neither of the two USB-Serial adapters that we sell (the Digi Edgeport/1 and the Moxa uPort 1110) have Mac operating system drivers available.

    Sorry we can't help you on this occasion.

    Regards
    Kim
  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder Apr 30, 2010 1:45 PM in response to bigglesb
    Level 9 (60,904 points)
    Desktops
    Apr 30, 2010 1:45 PM in response to bigglesb
    Another way to interface to serial stylewriters used to be a Farallon Ethermac iPrint LS (for Serial), not to be confused with its twin brother, the LT (for LocalTalks).

    AppleTalk-over-Ethernet in one side, High speed serial out the other.

    But Alas, that will not solve the "10.6 does not do AppleTalk even for printers" problem.
  • by Matt Broughton,

    Matt Broughton Matt Broughton May 11, 2010 5:32 PM in response to bigglesb
    Level 5 (4,980 points)
    May 11, 2010 5:32 PM in response to bigglesb
    You should be able to get this to work. Make sure you have the Keyspan drivers installed. You will also need a driver for your printer which you can find at _http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting/macosx/lpstyl _

    I have had good success with the USA-28X running under OS X 10.2.x through 10.6.3.
  • by bigglesb,

    bigglesb bigglesb May 18, 2010 12:20 AM in response to Matt Broughton
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 18, 2010 12:20 AM in response to Matt Broughton
    Many thanks.

    We seem to be inching towards a solution to mate an Apple 1990s era Stylewriter 1200 printer (b & w only) to a very new 2010 Apple iMac running OSX 10.6.3.

    It seems that I need to download 2 extra updated drivers to solve the mating problem: one for the original Keyspan serial connector and one for the iMac print process. Am I correct and if so please advise the name and availability of these drivers?

    BB

    My 'spare' 50+ Canon BC-01 ink cartridges are suddenly looking useful once more.
  • by John Galt,

    John Galt John Galt May 18, 2010 6:08 AM in response to bigglesb
    Level 8 (49,039 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 18, 2010 6:08 AM in response to bigglesb
    The Keyspan driver is here:

    http://www.tripplite.com/shared/software/Driver/Mac-OS-10-6-v26b3-driver.zip

    This and the Stylewriter driver from Matt's post above should be all you need.

    Don't expect ink cartridges to last beyond their expiration date.
  • by bigglesb,

    bigglesb bigglesb May 30, 2010 4:18 AM in response to John Galt
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 30, 2010 4:18 AM in response to John Galt
    Many thanks for the replies. Am making some progress, but no printed pages from my trusty ancient Stylewriter II.
    I went through the steps outlined in earlier replies and now:
    1
  • by bigglesb,

    bigglesb bigglesb May 30, 2010 4:31 AM in response to bigglesb
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 30, 2010 4:31 AM in response to bigglesb
    My apologies - me again. Pressed the wrong key ...

    1 Can make the Stylewriter II appear in the printer menu on my iMax i5 running 10.6.3

    2 Stylewriter II shows 'print using' driver "Apple Stylewriter II, Footmatic + Ipstyl" but nothing else happens.

    3 Power supplies semm to be OK with leds aglow on first usb link & Stylewriter II. Other printer is a Canon iP2500.

    4 "Printer Ready" shows in Stylewriter II window.

    5 Selecting a sample print job in Pages does not produce a print task in the 'status' column, or name, sent, completed areas.

    6 Printer detup shows Driver Version 1.1 URL: file://dev/null

    7 Do I need to install Rosetta?

    We are almost there .......... just need the final clue please.

    Biggles
  • by bigglesb,

    bigglesb bigglesb May 30, 2010 6:44 AM in response to bigglesb
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 30, 2010 6:44 AM in response to bigglesb
    Using TextEdit I write a few sample words.

    I am then able to get the page to be printed listed.

    But nothing else happens as the printer error message - Error: /usr/libexec/cups/filter/cupsomatic failed - appears.

    Guess I need a better or correct 'cupsomatic'!

    Biggles
  • by Matt Broughton,

    Matt Broughton Matt Broughton May 30, 2010 7:50 AM in response to bigglesb
    Level 5 (4,980 points)
    May 30, 2010 7:50 AM in response to bigglesb
    Do I need to install Rosetta?


    Yes.

    Error: /usr/libexec/cups/filter/cupsomatic failed


    That is a symptom. You do not correct cupsomatic. Did you install Ghostscript? Did you run both AppleScripts included in the lpstyl package to set up your printer?
  • by bigglesb,

    bigglesb bigglesb May 30, 2010 9:53 AM in response to Matt Broughton
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 30, 2010 9:53 AM in response to Matt Broughton
    Matt,

    No printed pages as yet. But there is visible & audible progress.

    1 I installed Rosetta from the DVD that came with my Mac. Then restarted.

    2 When a TextEdit test page is selected for printing, the Stylewriter II green light comes on and it auto starts and whirs. Then the Print logo at the bottom of the screen shows a red print circle with a white '1' to indicate one item to print. But after maybe 5 secs the red circle containing the '1' disappears and all is silent. No printing whirring etc and NO printed page.

    We seem to be aalmost there! Please have patience and help solve this problem.

    Biggles
  • by bigglesb,

    bigglesb bigglesb May 30, 2010 10:26 AM in response to bigglesb
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 30, 2010 10:26 AM in response to bigglesb
    Matt,

    The Syylewriter II 'no print' problem has been solved by a bit of lateral thinking from an old man!

    Methinks what do I need to print?
    Power, connections, software, paper & ink. Plenty of paper, but opening the Stylewriter which had been stored for 10 years showed NO ink cartridge installed. Fitted one of the 50 or so ancient spares spares that I still have and tried again.

    Much whirring for a full 2 minutes and then it printed!

    Well done Sir for writing this bridging software and making it work. Thank you.

    Biggles (a sometime RAF Mach2 fighter pilot now retired) and grinning
  • by Matt Broughton,Solvedanswer

    Matt Broughton Matt Broughton May 30, 2010 11:14 AM in response to bigglesb
    Level 5 (4,980 points)
    May 30, 2010 11:14 AM in response to bigglesb
    Glad to hear you got it sorted out. I don't think we have had a Stylewriter that didn't work yet.

    I can't take any credit for writing any of the software. The original software driver was written a long time ago by Monroe Williams. He wrote the driver so he could use the Stylewriter on an old Unix system. The packaging of the lpstyl driver and the AppleScripts for installing things were done by Christian Walther.
  • by hillmore,

    hillmore hillmore Aug 12, 2010 2:24 PM in response to Matt Broughton
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 12, 2010 2:24 PM in response to Matt Broughton
    my (latest) problem is almost identical to biggles', except for the fact that my stylewriter has plenty of ink... I added a usb adapter to the ps/2 cable, downloaded the Footmatic and Ghostscript from Christian Walther's page (the footmatic installation stopped with an error message saying "The following step failed: run postflight script for Foomatic for StyleWriter" - but Christian's page says that doesn't matter as "the required components are already installed").
    The Stylewriter appeared as the default printer - yippee - and when I pressed print, my mac told me it was printing - but no printed pages came out of the stylewriter...
    So near yet so far....
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