Network Printer - Windows Hosted

A

AnotherUser

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 7, 2011
Messages
137
We currently have a Ricoh Afico SP C231SF and Dell 2335DN printer shared for our guests on our customer network. The printers are hosted from a Windows 7 machine with drivers for whatever flavor or Windows machine you have.

The issue is, when Mac users come in we start to struggle with setting them up. None of us here do much in the Mac world so we're struggling.

Do I need to look for a more Mac friendly printer or is there an easy (or any) way to some how share the printer with Mac OS devices? Right now, we have users navigate to a shared printer and all they do is double click to install. That is what I'm looking for on the Mac side.

Any help would be appreciated. If you need more info please let me know.

Thanks
 
If the printers support Appletalk or Bonjour, just turn it on in the printer settings and the Mac will automatically find and configure them. If not, just map them as a network printer and Mac will use the Gutenprint drivers. If your printers aren't supported by Gutenprint for some reason, you may need to download drivers from the manufacturer's site.
 
Not sure about the ricoh but that dell should be a proper network printer. Why are you using a windows host machine? Put the dell on the network proper and let machines (including the mac) print directly to them.
 
bigddybn said:
Not sure about the ricoh but that dell should be a proper network printer. Why are you using a windows host machine? Put the dell on the network proper and let machines (including the mac) print directly to them.
Click to expand...

They can point right to the printer if they want but the drivers are hosted from that machine so it's so much faster than waiting for Windows to download if it does not have it stored already.

The Ricoh does not have support, the Dell claims it does but I cannot find a location to enable this, working with Dell on that.

Are there any options to "make" a printer Appletalk or Bonjour supported? Like some sort of software server application?
 
The easiest way to simplify things is probably to install the LPD service on the print server (or, enable LPD on the printers themselves). Then, all the users need is to plug in the IP or DNS name, the name of the printer queue (printer's name in Windows; probably lp0 or lp1 on the printers' built-in print server), and select a driver (stick the proper driver it on a public share if you like, but generic postscript should work).

There are AirPrint activators which enable Bonjour so that iOS devices can print to Windows shared printers, but it's questionable whether they play nice with Mac OS clients. If you're feeling particularly frisky, however, and you have a DNS server on-site which you're comfortable setting up, you can apparently roll your own. The specification (PDF) is relatively compact and straightforward. Googling "bonjour printer linux", "bonjour bind", and "bonjour printer rp ty" got me in the vicinity of useful information. (More info here; example setups here, here, here, and here.)

Of course, if this is a profit driver, the proper answer is to get a Mac mini running OS X Server and daisy-chain the print queues through it. That way you have a support contract.
 
XenIneX said:
The easiest way to simplify things is probably to install the LPD service on the print server (or, enable LPD on the printers themselves). Then, all the users need is to plug in the IP or DNS name, the name of the printer queue (printer's name in Windows; probably lp0 or lp1 on the printers' built-in print server), and select a driver (stick the proper driver it on a public share if you like, but generic postscript should work).

There are AirPrint activators which enable Bonjour so that iOS devices can print to Windows shared printers, but it's questionable whether they play nice with Mac OS clients. If you're feeling particularly frisky, however, and you have a DNS server on-site which you're comfortable setting up, you can apparently roll your own. The specification (PDF) is relatively compact and straightforward. Googling "bonjour printer linux", "bonjour bind", and "bonjour printer rp ty" got me in the vicinity of useful information. (More info here; example setups here, here, here, and here.)

Of course, if this is a profit driver, the proper answer is to get a Mac mini running OS X Server and daisy-chain the print queues through it. That way you have a support contract.
Click to expand...

I do have FingerPrint running on a machine that helps in supporting the iOS devices. I will try a few things in regards to Mac OS and these printers, see what I can come up with.
 
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