Printing Through Airport

I have 1 G4 iMac, 1G3 iMac and I TiBook, all with Airport cards installed. The G4 iMac is set up to operate as the Airport Software Base Station, and is connected to an ADSL router via the Ethernet port. An Epson Phot 810 is connected to the G4 iMac via a USB port.

The other two computers are able to enjoy a high-quality signal enabling them to use the ADSL connection to the internet via Airport. They can also see the Epson printer in their Print Center list over the Rendezvous/Airport LAN and to print directly to it.

Forgot to mention that all three computers as listed above are running 10.2.

I gather you want to hook up printer directly to ONE of the Macs and use printer sharing. I've not used it yet, but someone in forums might better be able to comment if you said HOW you wanted (non-ethernet I guess? USB? ) to attach printer ... and WHAT KIND of printer we discussing?

I'd be interested to know more about the possibilities myself.

PS: And are you wanting to use a SOFTWARE base station rather than an separate Airport? (Again, I don't know if that affects any limitations)

I have a LaserWriter IIg that I share on my ethernet network between two wireless Macs and one wired Mac.

I guess my understanding of printer sharing goes like this:

1. If the printer has an ethernet port, than you can print one of two ways. A) You can assign it an IP address if it supports TCP/IP or B) you can simply Appletalk on your Macs and print that way (my solution). In either case, the printer has to be on your network. If your network has a wired portion and a hub, I'd just connect the printer to the hub. If you are mostly wireless and you don't have a hub, the easy answer for 10.2 machines is to just connect the printer to one of your Macs with an ethernet cable and turn on internet sharing for that machine. That Mac will connect to the network via Airport and the network will then be 'connected' to your wired printer.

2. If the printer is not networkable (USB mostly) then Printer Sharing is the way to go. I've not used this so my description may not be exactly correct, but essentially you connect the printer to one Mac, and that Mac becomes a print server.

I think that about covers it. You can share a printer over an AirPort network. How you do it depends mostly upon the type of printer.

Chris

I am trying to decide if I should buy a separate Base Station. I already have this "Network Server" provided by earthlink, and I am not sure how that will affect things. I was getting airport cards for reletively inexpensive, so it just leaves me the base station to buy. I don't want to get it if it will not eliminate cables. My room mate would kill me!
I have a Lexmark Z23 USB printer and can see it via sharing in Jaguar.
Thanks
Tom
tadvorak1@earthlink.net

All of the computers except the b/w can work with airport. The b/w would just have to be on the 100 base-t end of things. An airport network can simply extend your existing wired network, or it can act as a DHCP server and administer the network for you by assigning the i/p addresses. It can also share a dialup connection as well.

If you already have a DHCP server (ie: your cable or dsl modem) then adding a base sstation can mess things up.. You just have to turn off that feature in the base station. You can't have two of those servers on the the same network.

If you are using the dialup modem you could set up your network with just the base station and a crossover cable to the b/w (the base station might auto switch??) If you have DSL or cable you would have a 3 way wired network between the base station, the modem/router, and the b/w mac. Your existing hub can do that or you could just plug both into the airport. The airport has two ports (one is 10baseT, the other is 100base-T.)

Just add the airport hub to your wired network. It sounds like your earthlink modem is a DHCP server.

But first turn off the DHCP server settings in the airport admin utility. A two minute job.

This is how my ibook is setup to my cisco DSL modem.