HP Laserjet IIp plus printer driver

Hi, John. HP offers no Mac drivers for the IIp or IIp+, probably because they were built with only a parallel-port interface, which Macs can't use. They are not PostScript printers, so even if you could connect yours to your Mac, it couldn't use the Apple or Adobe PostScript driver that some HP printers (e.g. my LaserJet 4M) can use.

I believe the only way you'll be able to use the IIp+ with any Mac will be to locate a used Infowave PowerPrint cable-and-driver package (the cable is essential; the driver alone would be of no value). But that will only help you on a Mac that can boot into OS 8.x or 9.x and has an ADB port, which no iMac does. And when it was new, PowerPrint was expensive: it cost more than many low-end printers, so most people just replaced their printers instead of bothering with PowerPrint. Even PowerPrint won't serve your needs unless you have an old ADB-equipped Mac to run it on, so you should probably plan to use a different printer instead of the IIp+.

Hi, John. You may have used the open-source Gimp-Print to drive the printer in OS X. Unfortunately, there is nothing comparably versatile for use in OS 9.

The PowerPrint cable is/was (PowerPrint has been discontinued, I think) something more than just an adapter, since it required the ADB port as a power supply: evidently it was processing the signal somehow in transit, and that processing must have been controlled by the PowerPrint software. Whether PowerPrint's software would work with a different sort of cable, I don't know, but I'd be surprised if it did.

Since you've managed to get the printer working with your machine, maybe you should keep it and give your friend something else.

Hi John;
Just buckled under the pressure and forced her to upgrade. (I know she will love me forever!)

It is probably for the best. The latest word I just heard was that when OS X 10.5 is released there will be no more Classic so if you have to do anything under Classic you would be forced to stay at on Tiger forever.

Allan