Printing to an HP Officejet Pro 8500A (A910) with OS X 10.4.11 (PPC)?

Question

Level 1

0 points

Printing to an HP Officejet Pro 8500A (A910) with OS X 10.4.11 (PPC)?

I recently bought an HP Officejet Pro 8500A (A910) and discovered the application suite/drivers are only for 10.5.x and above. That works fine with my newer Mac Mini, but my older iMac G5 (OS X 10.4.11, PPC) can't print to it. I have the 8500A connected via ethernet cable to my router. Is there a way to "map" the printer? Seems as though I could use the IP address of the printer and get at least SOME functionality (if only printing...I don't necessarily need the scan/fax functions).

I'm even to the point where I would consider upgrading to 10.5.x, but the only OS product out is 10.6.x, and it is only compatible with Intel-based Macs.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.11), PPC processor

Posted on Mar 1, 2011 9:53 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

BDAqua

Level 10

239,177 points

Mar 1, 2011 10:16 AM in response to joefix93

Hi Joe, and a warm welcome to the forums & Macs! 🙂

Apple doesn't advertise it, but if you call them you're likely to be able to buy a copy of Leopard/10.5, but I heard it was in short supply...

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2767370&tstart=0

Leopard requirements/10.5.x...

* Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor

minimum system requirements

* 512MB of memory (I say 2GB at least)
* DVD drive for installation
* 9GB of available disk space (I say 30GB at least)

You have to call Apple & likely ask for a Product Specialist to get it, if they still have it! Helps to tell them you have an iPad/iPhone & you can't run 10.6.

Not sure it'll work, but you might also try turning on Printer Sharing on the Mini, then use a Generic Postscript driver on the iMac G5.

Reply

Answer 2

Oct 14, 2011 11:29 AM in response to joefix93

I recently bought the HP Officejet Pro 8500A Plus (A910g) and I have an older iMac G4 with OS X 10.4.11.

I took a chance and installed the HP drivers for the previous 8500 model (A909) because there is a 10.4 & 10.5 version. The automatic install of the A910 fails because the older driver does not recognize the new printer (A910); however, a manual install afterwards and selecting the A909 driver enabled me to print to my new A910 from my old iMac G4 800MHz. Scanning did not work, but I still have a few things to try out. Besides, the nice scan-2-email and scan-2-network-drive features almost makes that a non-issue.

Reply