Printing to Parallel or Serial Port Printers Under Mac OS X?

Federic,

Until recently, we did all our printing from a Beige G3 and G4MDD (both running 10.3.9), an older eMac running Jaguar, and a new eMac running Tiger to an ancient LaserWriter 4/600PS. The trick cost a little money but worked wonderfully until the printer began to show its age after 12 years of daily use. I don't know if it will help the Epson; if the Epson could be networked via LocalTalk, it should work for it, too.

The trick is a LocalTalk-to-Ethernet adaptor. It turned the printer into an ethernet printer and jobs printed much faster than when the printer was networked to older Macs via Localtalk,

Our adaptor is a Farallon ePrint LT. They are no longer made but may be available on the used market. Asante still makes a similar device here.

The hookup also requires a PhoneNet connector. They are hard to find new but I hear they are all over the used market. The chain is:

laserwriter>--->PhoneNet adap>---(phone cable)--->localtalk-to-enet adap>-----(cat 5)---->computer, hub or router.

Worth looking into as it's a great solution.

Allan

Here's an eBay auction item that has a good picture of PhoneNet adaptors:

PhoneNet adapters

These are newer Farallons like I have. I have no idea what the "self-terminating locking connectors" are. Maybe Grant knows. Notice that each connector has two phone jacks; you can see the little terminators in a couple of the jacks. These are required if you use only one port. LocalTalk allowed daisy-chaining of computers and devices and that's when you would use both ports.

Here's a listing for an older style Farallon:

<a href-"http://cgi.ebay.com/5-Pack-of-PhoneNet-LocalTalk-Adapters_W0QQitemZ300016 248683QQihZ020QQcategoryZ51046QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohos ting"> Old Farallon adapter

I recommend the newer style shown in the first listing; we had some of the old ones at the office quit working. The newer style has been more reliable.

Here is the AAUI-to-ethernet transceiver (adaptor) for older MAcs with only an AAUI port:

Transceiver

I can't find a picture of the Farallon ePrint LocalTalk-to-Ethernet adaptor but the link in my first response shows the currently available unit from Asante. IF you find a Farallon ePrint, make certain it is labeled "LT." There is another with, I think, "SW" that only works with StyleWriter printers.

A winter windstorm woke me at 3AM so, if any of this looks like gibberish, you know why!

Allan

Frederic,

Could the LocalTalk Bridge 2.1 software (from the Apple download site, here) possibly be of interest for your continued experiments?

Jan

I would like to use an Epson Stylus Color II on a G3
running Mac OS X Jaguar, or a G3/BW running Panther.

...

(b) using GimpPrint, an adapter Parallel-USB, etc.

Alternative (b) should work, but you might not be happy with the performance. A few years ago, when I first tried OS X maybe with 10.1 and/or 10.2 I don't recall now, I had an Epson Stylus Color 800. It had serial and parallel interfaces on it for Mac and PC use. I was able to get a USB-parallel cable and installed a USB/FW PCI card in my G3 and installed the gimp-print drivers to get it working. Very often, the printer connection would get lost requiring a reboot to restore printing. I don't know if the gimp-print drivers have been improved in stability since then.

>"the "self-terminating locking connectors"

That is the genuine Apple implementation of the AppleTalk/LocalTalk hardware. No termination was required, but it could only support 8 devices at modest cable lengths using special cables. The first version came apart too easily, so the locking connectors were invented.

Farallon studied what Apple had done and decided that requiring a terminator in the last empty socket was not a heavy burden. That would allow you to quadruple both the cable lengths and the number of stations supported. You could also use readily-available and cheap telephone wire instead of special cables.

The market saw PhoneNet as so compelling there were multiple "copy-cat" products produced by other companies. Nobody copied Apple locking connectors.

Jan-

That is a great idea! That software uses both the Ethernet port and "Printer" port on a Mac OS 7, 8, or 9 computer to implement (in software) the AppleTalk-over-Ethernet to AppleTalk/LocalTalk function. It is supposed to be able to run quietly in the background and still allow the Mac to be used for other tasks.