1 old LaserJet 4L, the one without the mac goodies, just the parallel port, cost £0 from freecycle
1 parallel to usb cable, cost about £8 from ebuyer
1 copy of gutenprint (v5.0.1, cost £0, right here)
1 copy of usbtb (v1.0.15, cost £0, right here)
Recipe:
- plug in printer to power, but not usb cable...
- install Gutenprint on mac
- plug in printer usb cable to mac
- open printer setup (in Apps/Utilities) - remember to hold the ALT key when doing add printer, else you don't see the 'Advanced' menu
- read Gutenprint howto document (a rather good pdf), follow instruction there.
- be happy when printer is in printer list
- be happier still when you print a page and it works beautifully (if a little slow... hey, it's a 10 year old printer!)
Does it make things go faster? hard to say, will need to play, and i've not reason to disbelieve 'em...
As for the cable, I did find a whole bunch of expensive looking ones, and spurious reports that these expensive ones have 'special' stuff. Whatever, my cheap £8 one works just fine thanks. See ebuyer, product code 130599.
[update Feb 09; as per comment below, not working on 10.4 - can't retest myself...]
4 comments:
After months of being told that I'd never be able to connect my new Mac to my old HP Laser Jet 4, I found your post and saved myself from having to buy a new printer. Thanks very much!
Love, from Canada
Excellent!
I tried iit on Mac OSx Tiger and Leopard, and it works with my old Laserjet 4L. More, I plugged it on a DSLBox (Freebox in France), and now the printer works just like a server printer!
Thank you!
Best regards, from Franc
Hi
I followed your advice for my girls' leap to a Mac laptop with OS X 10.5 no proplem.
However my laptop with 10.4.1 it doesn't work. won't recognize the usbtb.
i tried all the gutenprint versions. 5.02 and 5.23
any advice?
greg
gghefford@yahoo.ca
Hey, this works just fine. Thankyou,thankyou,thankyou... May your days be filled with happiness & sunshine...
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