roughana <andrew.roughan@writeme.com> wrote:
On Apr 9, 10:49 am, pp1...@webtv.net (Pete PPP) wrote:
Currently I'm running a small Appletalk network consisting of several
Macs, an Appletalk compatible HP serial printer and, of course, a GS. :)
The setup is as follows. Printer (Terminated - GS - Macs (Last one
terminated)
Everything works fine except that I can find no Appletalk printer
drivers for the GS specific to this printer. I do have the Harmony
drivers I bought some time ago that drive this printer correctly via
Direct Connect through the serial port.
Of course, if anyone has found a way a ROM3 can print to a HP540 over
Appletalk I'd be very happy to hear it.
Sorry, I don't have an answer for you, but I'm interested in the
problem and would like to open up the discussion a bit.
Me too, but I didn't have time for a detailed followup. Here is a quick
answer, relying on memory for something I only looked at briefly, about
eleven to fifteen years ago, and I don't have my IIgs handy to check
some points. Please excuse the lack of detail.
In summary: it is likely to be impossible to get the HP540 to work with
the IIgs over AppleTalk, unless someone has written a network print
driver for it. It might be possible to manually hack a test setup, but
updating the existing driver will probably require reverse engineering
and rewriting large portions of it.
I'm going to assume that the IIgs can print to at least one other
Appletalk capable printer (Laserwriter ??).
If that is the case then I'm wondering why the HP540 is not seen as an
Appletalk printer in the IIgs equivalent of the Mac "Chooser".
Presumably a different driver is needed for different connection
mechanisms?
IIgs System 5 and later use the Control Panel to connect to a printer.
There is a "Direct Connect" and something like "Network Printer" (memory
a little hazy as to its name). The one Apple supplies will only be able
to locate networked LaserWriter, ImageWriter and ImageWriter LQ printers
(or any third party one which pretends to be one of those models).
Any AppleTalk compatible Postscript printer should be recognised as a
LaserWriter, but might not be compatible with the IIgs due to Postscript
compatibility issues (and probably can't run the ImageWriter II
emulator, so it wouldn't work from 8-bit software).
For other printers, you would need a patched or third-party network
printer chooser which knows about the correct "type" field in the
AppleTalk Name Binding Protocol name of the printer: where an Apple
printer identifies itself as "LaserWriter" or "ImageWriter", the
third-party printer will have a different string. In theory you could
set this up by manually creating or patching the file which the network
printer control panel creates (name also eludes me), and manually
configure the correct printer and port drivers (don't remember how this
part works).
The question then is whether the printer driver will work over an
AppleTalk connection, or whether it is tied to a serial port. Unless it
is specifically written to work over a network, it probably won't work.
To fill in some more details, I'd have to dig out the right manuals from
their deeply buried boxes in the basement. I do have access to Inside
AppleTalk, but it probably won't help a lot for this degree of
IIgs-specific detail.
The file that contains the chosen network printer is the same one that
is used by ProDOS-8 to patch AppleTalk support into the MLI on a IIe
with an AppleTalk card, which normally resides in the root directory on
P8. With GS/OS it lives in */SYSTEM/DRIVERS (or thereabouts) and only
contains the data to configure the chosen network printer and a few
other AppleTalk settings.
ATSETUP or something similar?