Print to printer with no PS support

Question

Print to printer with no PS support

Hi all,

We've just recently inherited a Sharp MX-2600N printer in our office. Most users on my network are using Windows which has no trouble printing to this device (PCL drivers work fine). However I have a couple of users on my network (myself included) who run Macs. Now, on investigation this printer doesn't have the PS module setup (paid for at a $700 premium extra) and I don't really fancy spending a load of money just for two users!

I've been reading up on Ghostscript, Foomatic Rip and Pxlmono but it's all a bit gibberish to me and I can't get my head around making it all work.

I can set it up as a Generic PCL printer on Mac but there's no options for print and the output quality is poor.

I guess what I'm looking for is a way to process output from a Mac into PCL so I get all the options like colour, duplex and stapling etc.

Any help would be greatly received!

Mac Pro, macOS Sierra (10.12.6), 2 x 2.93 Xeon, 32GB RAM, Quadro4000

Posted on Sep 25, 2017 8:33 AM

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Answer 1

Sep 25, 2017 10:06 AM in response to Phill Horrocks1

This multi-function printer would be sensational with the $700 Postscript option which would unlock most of its true professional capabilities. That business expense could arguably be cost recovered in the postscript quality of the output — especially for customer executive deliverables, where poorer quality from PCL output would not go unnoticed. Gutenprint for macOS does not support this MFP. Foomatic might not support it in color PCL.

Here is a link to the OS X 10.8 - 10.11 MX-2600 print drivers, which may include the PCL6 color support in the absence of Postscript.

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Answer 2

Sep 29, 2017 1:50 AM in response to VikingOSX

Alas, there are no PCL drivers for Mac in the package. I'm thinking there must be a way I could setup a Windows machine to act as some kind of print server so I could send jobs from my Mac to that, then have the Windows PC handle the printing? I can't justify the $700 expenditure really just for jolly-old-me!

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Answer 3

John Galt

Level 10

141,204 points

Sep 29, 2017 7:36 PM in response to Phill Horrocks1

If you don't want to spend the money on the Postscript option (which I think would be a good investment), designating a Windows PC as a print server is an option. I'm no longer well-versed with Windows but I know they can share printers in the same way as Macs do.

If you want to explore Ghostscript please let me know how far you got, so I don't have to duplicate that effort. It might not be worth pursuing since recent macOS versions can't handle metapackages (if that's how it is packaged, and that's what I recall having to do).

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Answer 4

John Galt

Level 10

141,204 points

Sep 25, 2017 9:54 AM in response to Phill Horrocks1

Did you check here:

"Contains: Mac OS 10.10-10.12 Print Drivers"

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