Some changes to my network and a 20 minute experiment led just in the past hour to my resolving this small irritation from days of yore.
On my home network, I recently moved from an AppleShare 4 Server running on a Quadra to an Appleshare IP 6.3 Server running on a PowerMac 8600/300, and to a LW 4/600 from a LW Pro 630, which has gone on to do other useful work for me in another setting.
In AppleShare IP, I discover that it is a trivial matter to set up an IP print queue, outputting to an Appletalk-only printer. (Laserwriter 8 is required; an Appletalk Router is also needed if, as I did, you are bridging localtalk and ethernet — I use the Apple Internet Router running on an LC475, though LaserWriter Bridge running on the ASIP server should work fine for these purposes; also needed is the Apple Desktop Printer Utility to set up the printer on the wireless machine running OS9 or below from which you want to do the printing).
My Pismo now prints just fine to my LW4/600, which appears as an IP printer to it over Airport in MacOS9.2. The printer shows up on the desktop with its proper icon, and all the usual functionality appears to be in place: e.g., drag and drop printing. Whereas my wireless router would not forward classic Appletalk packets from the Pismo in OS9, it will forward IP print jobs just fine, and everything works as it should.
It was a small thing, easily resolved by plugging in an ethernet cable before, but I knew there had to be a solution on the wireless side of things short of finding myself an actual Airport base station. But why printing from machines on the home network running OSX has been unproblematic over Airport all along, whereas printing over Airport under OS9 on the Pismo needed this fix, I do not quite understand.
Any suggestions?
On my home network, I recently moved from an AppleShare 4 Server running on a Quadra to an Appleshare IP 6.3 Server running on a PowerMac 8600/300, and to a LW 4/600 from a LW Pro 630, which has gone on to do other useful work for me in another setting.
In AppleShare IP, I discover that it is a trivial matter to set up an IP print queue, outputting to an Appletalk-only printer. (Laserwriter 8 is required; an Appletalk Router is also needed if, as I did, you are bridging localtalk and ethernet — I use the Apple Internet Router running on an LC475, though LaserWriter Bridge running on the ASIP server should work fine for these purposes; also needed is the Apple Desktop Printer Utility to set up the printer on the wireless machine running OS9 or below from which you want to do the printing).
My Pismo now prints just fine to my LW4/600, which appears as an IP printer to it over Airport in MacOS9.2. The printer shows up on the desktop with its proper icon, and all the usual functionality appears to be in place: e.g., drag and drop printing. Whereas my wireless router would not forward classic Appletalk packets from the Pismo in OS9, it will forward IP print jobs just fine, and everything works as it should.
It was a small thing, easily resolved by plugging in an ethernet cable before, but I knew there had to be a solution on the wireless side of things short of finding myself an actual Airport base station. But why printing from machines on the home network running OSX has been unproblematic over Airport all along, whereas printing over Airport under OS9 on the Pismo needed this fix, I do not quite understand.
Any suggestions?