Canon BJC-50 on a Mac over a Windows network?

[Jonathan L. Parker]

Hi, everyone. Long time no read, but I've done a little upgrading which
has prompted a few questions, and this seems like the best place to ask
them.

My old Canon BJC-50 is still chugging along after more than eight years,
so when my ancient HP desktop printer finally became too expensive to
keep operating (those old HP 25 and 26 cartridges are just too hard to
find these days, and refilling them was never a walk in the park) I
decided to retire the Canon from portable use (which I almost never did
anyway) and hooked it to my paleolithic 60 megahertz Pentium desktop PC
running Windows 95, which I pretty much use only for file storage.

Anyway, over the summer I became the proud owner of a MacBook Pro, which
is now running OS X 10.4.10 natively and Windows Vista Business
virtually via VMWare Fusion. I can read and write to the Windows 95
shares via both operating systems without a problem, although I do have
to put in the IP address in the "Connect to Server" dialog box in Finder
(none of the other purported permutations of workgroup, machine name,
etc., work). I can also print to the shared BJC-50 in Vista. Where
things fall apart is when I try to connect to the printer in OS X. I
know it'll work on a Mac-albeit not too well-using the Gutenprint driver
because I've used it directly connected (via a USB docking station with
a parallel port). Neither the computer nor the printer show up like
they're supposed to when I click on the workgroup name when trying to
add the printer. None of the various combinations of how you're
supposed to put in the workgroup or computer name or IP address with or
without your username and/or password have worked.

Is my problem due to the fact that I'm still using Windows 95 as the
host, as I'm beginning to suspect, or is someone out there using a
BJC-50 or similar printer over SMB who can help? Could my having to
connect to the desktop by putting in its IP address be a clue?

Oh, by the way, the network is wireless (Linksys BEFW11S4 access point)
if that makes any difference.

Not that this is a big problem, mind you. Not only do I have a new
printer that works with Macs, but as I said, I can use the BJC-50 in
Vista if I absolutely have to. I'm just curious as to whether this is
doable in OS X.

 

[Jonathan L. Parker]

Had a few days off which gave me a bit more time to play around with
this. The problem, as I suspected, is that the combination of this
printer and Windows 95 isn't Samba-friendly, so although I can access
shared files on the desktop, printing is a whole other story.

The solution is to use another protocol, namely LPD. You start by
setting up Win 95 to use it and finish by setting up OS X to connect to
it. The first step is to download lpd.zip from this site:
http://www.kabelmax.de/lpd.zip

After unzipping it, run lpdadm.exe and click the "Put LPD-Win into
Registry" button so LPD runs whenever you boot the host machine. Then
click the "Run LPD-Win" button to start the program so you can set it up
to use your printer. When it does start, go to File>Add Printer and
give your printer a name that'll be easy for you to remember when you go
back to your Mac. Check the box for "Print Raw Directly to Win
Printer," then find and choose the printer in both the dropdown lists
underneath. This will make the printer show up in the Printers list at
the top. Restart the host.

Before you head for the Mac, make sure you know the IP address of your
host machine. You'll need this to connect to the printer. If you have
to find it, run the winipcfg command (either from Start>Run or a
command prompt).

As I said in my initial post, I'm running Tiger (OS X 10.4.10) so any of
you running an earlier version-or who've made the jump to Leopard-may
need to do this differently. Go to Apple>System Preferences>Print and
Fax and click the plus sign to add a printer. In the Printer Browser
box that pops up, choose the "IP Printer" button at the top if it isn't
highlighted already. Make sure "Line Printer Daemon-LPD" is showing
under "Protocol." Enter the host's IP address under "Address" and the
name you gave the printer under "Queue." Enter this name again under
"Name" and choose the proper driver for your printer under "Print
Using." Click "Add" and you're ready to try things out. Hope you have
the same luck I did.