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| Author | Is it worth trying to get my printer working? (Read 20859 times) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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cantonjohn
16 MB  Posts: 26 System 7 Newcomer! 
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on: February 19, 2023, 13:11
Before I dive into the weeds to find if this is possible, would anyone know if it would be possible to get my printer working. It's a 'Brother HL-L2350DW series-AirPrint' b/w laser printer. It prints over Wifi on my modern Mac. Would like it to print from my Raspberry Pi Linux (MacintoshPi) Basilisk II, running System 7.5.5. I'm guessing one possibility would be to send a PostScript file to the 'Unix' mounted disk which appears on the 7.5.5 Desktop, and get Linux to send it to the printer? |
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB  Posts: 2023
Reply #1 on: February 19, 2023, 14:06
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If your Brother printer supports Postscript, it should be up to the task. At least on real hardware, I have no BII emulation experience. But I do have a Kyocera laser printer and I use it for all my printing needs. It's connected via Ethernet to our network. Install the latest LaserWriter driver and try to set it up as per my tutorial. As written in the tutorial, it sometimes really takes a long time for it to come up in the chooser on the first try, so don't despair if it's not right there :-) Please let us know if you managed to get it going in emulation?
Last Edit: February 19, 2023, 14:09 by Bolkonskij
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cantonjohn
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16 MB Posts: 26 System 7 Newcomer!
Reply #2 on: February 19, 2023, 14:55
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OK, just trying that now. It's not practical to connect the printer physically with ethernet cable to my router, so hopefully it will work over Wifi? I downloaded the LaserWriter 8.1.1 driver, and installed. Restarted, and I selected LaserWriter 8 in Chooser. It told me that AppleTalk was inactive, I pressed OK to activate. And now the Chooser has 'LaserWriter 8' selected on the left, but nothing on the right. (the bottom right has Setup greyed out, Background Printing on, AppleTalk Active). I haven't seen a Create button, or anything about selecting a Generic PPD.
Last Edit: February 19, 2023, 14:58 by cantonjohn
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #3 on: February 19, 2023, 16:20
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You can try to send the print job from MacOS to the remote host via tools like Interprint. And if you use DAVE and your printer is network capable then you can print to it directly from MacOS, w/o going through a Linux host first.
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cantonjohn
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16 MB Posts: 26 System 7 Newcomer!
Reply #4 on: February 19, 2023, 20:15
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Will give those options a go. The earliest version of Dave I can find (v2) requires System 7.6. Maybe v1 of Dave would work on 7.5.5, but can’t find it. The laserwriter driver lets me print to a PS file, so I might be able to save to a folder on the Unix volume… and this can be watched-for-changes using a Linux app like watchman. Watchman can then send the file to the printer using ‘lpd’ or cups or something. Some vague ideas how to progress. Will keep everyone updated.
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MTT
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256 MB Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer
Reply #5 on: February 19, 2023, 23:09
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And if you aren't able to print directly, I suggest that you create a PDF of the file[s] from the PS output first. Primarily because of fonts used in your document will likely not be available on your Linux system and printing from the raw PS may not produce acceptable results. And for best results (PS to PDF) on Basilisk II, is Distiller, from the Acrobat 3.0 install (Mac Garden). Although, for good results, use the direct to PDF print driver PDFWriter (and also included in with the Acro3 package). PDFWriter forgoes the need to convert PS to PDF, it's faster, easier to use, printing direct to PDF and probably sufficient for most purposes.
Last Edit: February 20, 2023, 02:31 by MTT
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #6 on: February 20, 2023, 02:21
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This site offers prebuilt sheepshaver and basilisk packages for the classic MacOS. <http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/macos9win.html> The link was posted a couple weeks ago. There are packages for both newer Windows and MacOS. These packages include scripts, that automatically add shared directory function, as well as scripts that provide easy to use and configure printer solution for printing to whatever printer might be the default on the Host OS. The site has emulator packages for both Windows and Mac. They are very nicely built and work very well. The basilisk for 7.6.1 is quite fast as one expects from 7.6.1. There is also excellent documention included on the site. If you are doing emulation from a new(ish) Mac or Windows machine and want to do emulation of the Classic Mac OSes it is a very nice place to start.
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cantonjohn
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16 MB Posts: 26 System 7 Newcomer!
Reply #7 on: February 20, 2023, 17:19
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Well, here's what I did to get this working. On the Linux Raspberry Pi that my Sheepshaver/7.5.5 is running on, I installed 'inotify-tools' and 'cups'. 'inotify' lets you perform a command when something changes on your file system. And 'cups' lets you print. I set up cups using this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK3rFKajb_Q - giving the printer the name "Brother_Laser". Additionally I made my printer the default, since it's the only one I'm going to print to, with this command: Code: [Select] lpoptions -d "Brother_Laser"I edited the etc/rc.local file, putting this function near the top, which checks if any file has been put in the 'printjob' folder: Code: [Select] monitorprint() {... and this at the bottom of rc.local: Code: [Select] su pi -c "mac os7 macpiautostart" &Back on the emulated Mac,I created a couple of folders, on the 'Unix' disk on the desktop - 'printjob' and 'printed'. The restarted everything. Here's how I print. File > Print. Choose 'File' as destination, the Save the '.ps' file to the 'printjob' folder. It will print it and then move the '.ps' file to the 'printed' folder. If you want to print a previously printed '.ps' file, you can just move it back to the 'printjob' folder. You can also copy a '.pdf' file to the 'printjob' folder and it will print without needing to open an app.
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