LaserWriter Pro 630 Network Printer Problem

Greetings!

I’m having some printing problems and I hope someone here can help.

I have a small home network (2 Macs, 2 Windows XP boxes and 1 network laser printer).

Here’s how I set it up…

-Control Panel -> Printers and Faxes -> Add Printer

-Add Local Printer

-Create a new port (Local Port)

-Name: LaserWriter Pro 630

The drivers are installed with no errors, but no test page (or anything else for that matter) will print.

I can print fine from both Macs, but not from either XP box. Now, here’s the really strange thing. One of my XP boxes is a dual boot XP/Win 2000 Pro. If I boot into Win 2KPro and set up the printer the same way I did in XP it prints fine.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Oh, and one other thing...If I plug the printer into one of my XP boxes using the parallel port, it works fine, it's just not on the network.

 

1 network laser printer

If that is the case (network printer with an IP address and either it's own NIC or attached to a print server that connects to the network), you normally won't want to create a local port. Simply add a network printer.

When you are setting up the network printer, if you know you are going to print from old applications (DOS stuff mostly) that requires an LPT port or something, there is an option to fake one as part of the setup process.

 

I have a HP 5850 Network Printer plugged into the Router.

2 98SE and 1 XP Pro machine. I had to installed the printer drivers on each iindividual machine.

Is your printer and individual component of the Network or is it shared ?

I also have a HP 5550 USB printer hooked to this machine 95.5% of the time it is USELESS to the other two machines.

BillyBob

 

Depends what you mean by "network" printer,

Do you mean one that connects to the network directly and not through a PC, which requires a network card in the printer or a print server box,

or

Do you mean a printer attached to another PC and shared on the network?

If it is not shared by a certain PC, and has cat 5 cable plugged into it, or a print server box, it is a real network printer. In this case, it will have an IP address. When you create a new port when settng up this type of printer, you need to specify TCP/IP port with the IP of the printer as the address whe asked. Mayeb i am on the wrong path. Not sure. More info needed.

 

Dez Bradley

Very good question(s). It does make a difference.

As I mentioned before. I have one SHARED printer which depends on THIS machine being on at all times. And even if it is on ot only works properly about 1/2 of the time.

The other does use a Cat5 cable ( printer to router ) and makes do difference whether this machine is on or not.

But either way it required the printer needed to be INSTALLED on each individual machine. Different OSs take different drivers.

BillyBob

 

I guess I should have been more clear. It is a network printer. It has it's own NIC and it's plugged into the same switch that my computers are plugged into. It is not plugged into a computer or print server.

If I try to set it up as a network printer (without creating a Local Port) my Windows computers simply can't find it. When I do set it up using a Local Port when I try to pring the lights on the AAUI flash a little (like it's handshaking) but not enough to actually be transmitting data.

P.S. I'm not sure if it matters or not, but it's a Postscript printer.

 

Can you give us make and model of printer? You may have to create a port especially for that type of printer.

 

Try this - and best to have the printer on and connected when you do.

 

Hey, thanks for the suggestions. You all got me looking in the right place.

After reading these last two posts I got to looking on Microsoft's technet and discovered that Windows XP no longer supports the AppleTalk protocol. I didn't catch this before because when I installed Win 2k my printer must have been on so Windows automatically installed AppleTalk and the printer drivers.

So even though XP does support my LaserWriter 630 Pro (with no 3rd party software or drivers) it doesn't support the network connection.

Oh well, I think I have a fifty-foot parallel cable around here somewhere...

Yup. It's not ideal, but it's working via parallel now

Thanks again!