Belkin Wireless G Print Server

Mike,
Can you take a minute and explain that again? I don't get it... Is there both a router with built-in print server and a separate print server?

It's also helpful to know the printer model.

The best way I know of to get best print quality from both the Mac (direct-connected to the printer) and the PC (printing to the shared printer) is to ADD the printer twice on the Mac - once with the Epson driver (Epson USB) and a second time with no driver, called a raw queue, so that the PC can use the Epson driver and the Mac just acts as a comm device (like a print server). This is how I get best quality from my little Epson R200 from both the Mac and the PC without unplugging anything - ever. Setting up a RAW queue is a little involved - I can post the instructions here if that's what you want.

Yes, you'd have to have the Mac on.

Mike, I just thought of another possibility for you --
If you can return the linksys print server and buy an Airport Express, you can use the Epson driver with that (from OS X), because Apple uses in-software print sharing rather that standard protocols for printing through an Express/Extreme base station.

Hope this helps.

HOWTO Add a raw printer queue in OS X
(by greg sahli, May 15, 2006)

What is a raw Queue for? You want to share a non-postscript printer from an OS X Mac, but you want the regular driver to work on Windows (instead of using a postscript driver on Windows).

1. Edit the files /etc/cups/mime.convs and /etc/cups/mime.types so that the line in each that starts with:
#application/octet-stream
has the beginning "#" removed (which means you have uncommented it).
I would use the freeware Text Wrangler and its menu item File>Open Hidden to edit these files.

2. Make sure the printer is on and connected by USB.
Go to Printer Setup Utility. Click Add, then note how the printer is identified next to the comm protocol, USB. In my case it is "Stylus Photo R200." Cancel and close Printer Setup.
Under the Apple menu, open About this Mac and click More Info to open System Profiler. Click on Hardware>USB. Under USB BUS, click on USB Printer. We will need two pieces of info from this, so keep it open in the background.

3. Open a web browser (Safari, Firefox, etc). Enter this URL, which is the local admin web server for CUPS on your computer:
http://localhost:631/
Click Do Administration Tasks. When it asks for authentication enter either your regular admin user/password, or, root and root's password. (Different computers are set up differently for this) Read more:
http://www.cups.org/articles.php?L191

4. Click Add Printer. Enter a helpful name, like R200_RAW (for my Epson R200). If you like, enter a short location and description. Click Continue. Select USB Printer, not the specific model. Continue. Now we need the info from System Profiler. Make the URI like this:
usb://EPSON/Stylus%20Photo%20R200?serial=MO7P104xxxxxxxx40
components of the above:
usb:// -- using the CUPS built-in USB backend driver
EPSON -- exactly as spelled (all-caps in my case) in System Profiler
Stylus%20Photo%20R200 -- as the name shows up in Printer Setup, but spaces are replaced with %20 (ascii substitute for space)
?serial=MO7P104xxxxxxxxx40 -- get the serial number from System Profiler.

5. Click Continue. Select Raw. Continue. Select Raw Queue (en). Continue. Done. Now try printing from the Windows computer.