Related to using a LaserWriter in 2011 (now 2012)...
Word to the wise: don't rely on Panther (or probably an older cat) to share your LaserWriter to a Lion machine!
I acquired Bob, my Ruby G3 iMac, some time ago, and now after a move I've got my network to a point to have it serve the Personal LaserWriter 320 to the network at large. (Necessary owing to the disappearance of AppleTalk since Snow Leopard; my PLW is LocalTalk only.) I put Panther on Bob because it's not really going to do anything besides share the printer and a drive; I don't need modern app or browser compatibility, so I thought I'd save the performance hit of Tiger. Oops.
I beat my head against the wall for days trying to get Castle, the late-2006 iMac running Lion) to even remotely acknowledge there was a printer there! Saw Bob on the network, but printer? What printer?
A little research revealed that 10.3.9 used CUPS but not Bonjour, and the latter would of course make my life oh so much simpler.
Put Tiger on, and BOOM, oh, you meant this printer! Sheesh.
The setup, if you care: Castle on the desk in the house, strictly wifi to the Airport Extreme (uplinked to DSL), from which Cat-5 runs out to the garage and a hub, where Bob, the PLW (on an AsanteTalk bridge), and my 8100/80 (Harvey) live, soon to joined by a Mac Plus. Very excited about that!
Re: Maintaining... I really couldn't say. This LaserWriter was my wife's in college, circa 1993/4, and as far as she remembers this is the original toner, still works great. Very comforting to search every once in a while to find replacements still exist, and are cheap.
P.S. This is what I love about Apple: I didn't bother to shut down the LW or the AsanteTalk bridge before doing the Tiger upgrade; I figured I'd rejigger them to get them visible to Bob afterward. Did the straight Upgrade option, and after the reboot... voila, LaserWriter still connected and ready! It was never that easy under Leopard, man; I had to unplug and replug the bridge and hold my mouth right.
Now go to Castle, go to add a printer, and I don't even have to say network printer, put in an address, none of that; the LW just immediately popped up as a quick first option, like a predictive Google search. When this stuff works, it really works.
Word to the wise: don't rely on Panther (or probably an older cat) to share your LaserWriter to a Lion machine!
I acquired Bob, my Ruby G3 iMac, some time ago, and now after a move I've got my network to a point to have it serve the Personal LaserWriter 320 to the network at large. (Necessary owing to the disappearance of AppleTalk since Snow Leopard; my PLW is LocalTalk only.) I put Panther on Bob because it's not really going to do anything besides share the printer and a drive; I don't need modern app or browser compatibility, so I thought I'd save the performance hit of Tiger. Oops.
I beat my head against the wall for days trying to get Castle, the late-2006 iMac running Lion) to even remotely acknowledge there was a printer there! Saw Bob on the network, but printer? What printer?
A little research revealed that 10.3.9 used CUPS but not Bonjour, and the latter would of course make my life oh so much simpler.
Put Tiger on, and BOOM, oh, you meant this printer! Sheesh.
The setup, if you care: Castle on the desk in the house, strictly wifi to the Airport Extreme (uplinked to DSL), from which Cat-5 runs out to the garage and a hub, where Bob, the PLW (on an AsanteTalk bridge), and my 8100/80 (Harvey) live, soon to joined by a Mac Plus. Very excited about that!
Re: Maintaining... I really couldn't say. This LaserWriter was my wife's in college, circa 1993/4, and as far as she remembers this is the original toner, still works great. Very comforting to search every once in a while to find replacements still exist, and are cheap.
P.S. This is what I love about Apple: I didn't bother to shut down the LW or the AsanteTalk bridge before doing the Tiger upgrade; I figured I'd rejigger them to get them visible to Bob afterward. Did the straight Upgrade option, and after the reboot... voila, LaserWriter still connected and ready! It was never that easy under Leopard, man; I had to unplug and replug the bridge and hold my mouth right.
Now go to Castle, go to add a printer, and I don't even have to say network printer, put in an address, none of that; the LW just immediately popped up as a quick first option, like a predictive Google search. When this stuff works, it really works.