printing to a network printer connected to a windows 2000 server

[B.J. van Heuven]

In our institute we had a Windows NT server and several HP
laserjet 4 Plus printers. Several Mac computers with OS 8,
9 and X were connected (by ethernet) to the network and
could print without effort through Appletalk.

Now we have a Windows 2000 server, HP laserjet 4200dtn
printers, and we can't print to them with Appletalk
anymore.

On the printers Appletalk is enabled.
I installed the HP drivers on the Mac computers.
When using the Chooser I can see and select the printers
which are on our network.
When printing a document everything looks fine, there are
no error messages, you can see the document going in and
out of the printque and theoreticly being printed.
But on the printer nothing happens!

Does anyone know what else I can try to get it working?

Bertie Joan

 

[William M. Smith]

In our institute we had a Windows NT server and several HP
laserjet 4 Plus printers. Several Mac computers with OS 8,
9 and X were connected (by ethernet) to the network and
could print without effort through Appletalk.

Now we have a Windows 2000 server, HP laserjet 4200dtn
printers, and we can't print to them with Appletalk
anymore.

On the printers Appletalk is enabled.
I installed the HP drivers on the Mac computers.
When using the Chooser I can see and select the printers
which are on our network.
When printing a document everything looks fine, there are
no error messages, you can see the document going in and
out of the printque and theoreticly being printed.
But on the printer nothing happens!

Hi Bertie!

You have potentially several issues here.

1.) Service pack 4 (aka sp4) on a Windows 2000 server is known to interfere
with Mac print services. I'm not quite sure what the symptoms of sp4 are,
but you may want to look at removing sp4 and installing up to sp3. Apply all
subsequent security patches, etc., just short of sp4.

2.) Macs print to printers using Postscript. Although a Windows print queue
should spool the raw data from the Mac directly to the printer without
touching it, having the PCL drivers and not the Postscript drivers installed
on the server can cause output problems. Be sure to install the Postscript
printer drivers for each printer on the server.

3.) HP printers (in particular the network cards) sometimes need to receive
Postscript information to a particular internal port if you're printing via
IP. This queue or port is "BINPS" (without the quotes). On the server while
setting up an HP printer, you'll enter the IP address of the printer or its
DNS name and enter BINPS as the port.

4.) Some HP printers also need to be "prepared" to received Binary
Postscript. Strangely, some are shipped ready to receive PCL information,
but have the Postscript ability turned off. Look on HP's website for the
printer utilities for your particular model and it may contain a small file
that you'll need to download to the printer to turn on its ability to
receive Postscript.

Hope this helps! bill

 

[heuven]

Thanks for your quick reply.
Looks like servicepack 4 is the problem in our case!

By the way, Mac users with OSX can print, but instead of
Appletalk they use "Rendezvous". This gives a list of the
network card ID numbers in our printers. If you select the
ID number of one of these printers, you can print to it.
(This only works for the HP 4200dtn printers in our
network, the other printers can not be found in this way)

Bertie Joan

 

[William M. Smith]

Thanks for your quick reply.
Looks like servicepack 4 is the problem in our case!

By the way, Mac users with OSX can print, but instead of
Appletalk they use "Rendezvous". This gives a list of the
network card ID numbers in our printers. If you select the
ID number of one of these printers, you can print to it.
(This only works for the HP 4200dtn printers in our
network, the other printers can not be found in this way)

Hi Bertie!

Glad you found your problem.

I'd like to add that Rendezvous allows your Macs to discover and connect to
printers directly. Using Rendezvous will not make the Macs print through the
server queue, which is what I thought you were after.

If you don't mind the Macs printing directly to the printers, you can try
enabling Appletalk (if available) on each of the printers and you'll have a
much easier time connecting.

Hope this helps! bill

 

[Dana Netz]

... my problem sounds similar but haven't been able to
resolve it, yet ..

... I have an old Mac running ver 7.5 that is connected via
ethernet to my LAN .. with my old NT machine I could
easily print to my Laserjet III Si (ethernet card
installed) from the mac .. however, since upgrading to
Win2k Server, I haven't been able to print at all ..

... Chooser seems to be able to find the printer okay and
the document spools to Print Manager just fine .. even PM
seems to have no trouble as it goes thru "finding
printer", "sending print job" and even clearing the
queue .. at the very end I get an error message "Due to a
communications error the document could not be printed"

... I tried suggestion number 2 below (installing a
postscript printer) but chooser couldn't negotiate it (I
had better luck in Chooser with the normal print driver)

... I'm not sure that numbers 3 or 4 are pretinent because
I could print to the device just fine with the NT
software, so the printer seems to be able to handle the
print job from the mac ..

... the first suggestion, uninstalling SP4 is a
possibility .. however, the version of Win2k that I
purchased has SP4 embedded .. can I install SP3 and clear
up this problem??

... thanks in advance for any suggestions .. Dana