Printing from an SE/30 to a modern HP printer?

[daver_cl]

Hi all, I've read a few guides for bridging AppleTalk with ethernet for AppleShare and printing, but I seem to get stuck at some point going down each path:

[Reddit] How I got my SE/30 to print to a cheapo laser printer.

I set up the VM and did my own from scratch, following the instructions. Everything seems to work except the A2SERVER can't see the Mac and vice versa.

Eric Bylenga - 68K Macintosh and a Modern Printer

Not sure my printer is compatible with LPD/LPR. And if it is, I can't discern the queue name.

[68kMLA] Network laser printer for old / modern Macs?

Same here, tried the updated LW software with no result

My hardware:

- A SE/30 running 7.5.5 with an Asante ethernet card

- HP Envy 4520 printer on wifi

- A2SERVER on the same network and subnet as the Mac (10.0.1.236 and 10.0.1.239 respectively)

And relevant software settings:

- AppleTalk set to Ethernet

- LW 8.5.1 installed

- A2SERVER running cups is able to successfully print test pages via the web ui

At this point I have no leads on troubleshooting. I think the A2SERVER route is probably my best bet, but I've hit a wall.

 

[olePigeon]

Hopefully I'm wrong, but this is what I've gathered:

You're trying to print to an inkjet printer.  They typically don't understand Postscript (though there are exceptions, such as plotters and a handful of networked "business" inkjet printers.)

The other problem is that your printer appears to use host-based printer drivers, as is the case with most HP printers.  It relies on the computer instead of the printer to handle the print job, so you would need native print drivers for your SE/30 (which don't exist).  However, you could use a different computer as an intermediary to work as a Print Server.  But I don't know what all would be involved in getting that to work.

 

[Byte Knight]

With an inkjet printer, I think your only hope would be via the cups method.  I couldn't figure out how to get this to work myself, but I know that SuperJer2000 was able to get this to work.  Hopefully he can comment.

 

[NJRoadfan]

On the A2SERVER VM, make sure you have the package "cups-filters" installed. This installs foomatic-rip, which will add ghostscript to the CUPS printing filter chain and allow it to convert incoming Postscript from the Mac to a raster image that CUPS can print. Share the printer in the CUPS web interface, this should make it available via LPR. Since A2SERVER has netatalk installed, you could use its PAP service, but that requires additional configuration.

On the SE/30, install the AdobePS driver, it tends to work better with generic printers. Regardless of driver, you'll need a PPD file for your printer that CUPS can provide for you on it's web interface (its also stored in /etc/cups/ppd, more info here as well: https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/openprinting/database/ppddocumentation#how_to_obtain_ppd_files) For LPR printing, you have to point it to the IP address of the RPi running A2SERVER.

 

[daver_cl]

Thanks all for the quick replies!

@NJRoadfan I think you sent me down a good path. It looks like LPD is disabled in modern versions of CUPS, but I found this stackexchange post suggesting a way to open the port. Sure enough running `nmap` showed that port 515 was closed, and this opened it. Also saw this one on askubuntu and did this too.

Now not only does the SE/30 see the LPD printer (instead of saying it "couldn't be verified"), my MacBook Pro can actually print via LPD via the VM running A2SERVER and CUPS. Unfortunately the SE/30 can't actually print, and throws and error "Requested printer could not be found."

So close... but not sure what the issue is.

 

[superjer2000]

Thanks all for the quick replies!

@NJRoadfan I think you sent me down a good path. It looks like LPD is disabled in modern versions of CUPS, but I found this stackexchange post suggesting a way to open the port. Sure enough running `nmap` showed that port 515 was closed, and this opened it. Also saw this one on askubuntu and did this too.

Now not only does the SE/30 see the LPD printer (instead of saying it "couldn't be verified"), my MacBook Pro can actually print via LPD via the VM running A2SERVER and CUPS. Unfortunately the SE/30 can't actually print, and throws and error "Requested printer could not be found."

So close... but not sure what the issue is.

I was able to get my Macs printing to both my Brother printers - one that understands Postscript (B&W printer) and one that doesn't (color printer).  Getting the postscript capable printer working was pretty straightforward with a Mac running OS 8.1 as I could just follow Eric Bylenga's instructions.  I didn't have any luck getting that to work with my SE/30 though.  I can't remember what the error was I was getting, but with whatever version of driver I was using that created Desktop Printers and allowed me to use LPR printing, I kept getting some kind of error.

I then setup CUPS printing on the Raspberry Pi that was running my netatalk server.  that allowed me to use the regular LaserWriter driver (still needed a newer version) on my Macs running 8.1 plus my SE/30 running 7.1 but I could only use my black and white brother as CUPS was sending postscript to the printer.  As my color printer doesn't support postscript, I needed to install CUPS compatible drivers BUT there weren't ARM drivers for the color printer that would work with my Brother - only i386 drivers.

So I ended up creating a VM on my main server computer (Intel based) that runs the newest version of Netatalk (2.2.6) that supports older AppleTalk networking.  That required making a change to the 2.2.6 code to fix a bug before compiling that somebody on Stackexchange (or similar site) found.  I was then able to install CUPS and as I was running on an intel machine, I was able to install the proprietary brother Linux drivers for my color printer.  With all of that I am now able to print from any of my Macs connected via Ethernet to both printers as long as they have a new enough version of the LaserWriter driver.  

 

[NJRoadfan]

OK, if you want to get papd running in A2SERVER, make sure cups and cups-filters is installed.
 

Setup the printer with the CUPS web interface and make sure you can print a test page (this makes sure CUPS is working).

For some reason the "cupsautoadd" function is NOT working with the netatalk build that is in A2SERVER, so you have to manually configure it.

You must follow the directions in the reddit post linked above:  netatalk PAP setup.

Note: You have to substitute your printer queue name in the configuration files.

Remember to save papd.conf and restart netatalk (type "netatalk-restart" from the A2SERVER shell)

After doing the above, I was FINALLY able to see the printer queue on the AppleTalk network (type "nbplkup" from the A2SERVER shell)

You will likely still need the PPD file for your printer that is in /etc/cups/ppd when setting up the LaserWriter 8 or AdobePS (preferred) driver on the Macintosh side of things.

 

[daver_cl]

Hmm yep I already had everything set up as you suggested. I'm actually running my own VM with Ubuntu 16.04 since the A2SERVER premade VM on his website is so old it can't download packages from apt  :sadmac:

The only thing I haven't tried are the AdobePS drivers. Do you have a link to the ones you tried? I tried searching the usual places and couldn't find them.

Since my modern Mac running Catalina can print via LPR via the VM runing CUPS, my guess is that it must be something on the SE/30 I'm doing wrong.

FWIW, when I run nbplkup on the VM I don't see the SE/30 listed. And on the SE/30 in the AppleTalk control panel, it says "Current zone: < no zones available >". I don't know enough about AppleTalk to even know what that means, or if it's relevant to my issue

 

[superjer2000]

Since you're running netatalk, have you tried to just enable printing through that?  Are you using desktop printing and entering an IP address or just selecting LaserWriter In The chooser and picking your printer?  The latter is what I'm doing with my netatalk install and cups.

 

[daver_cl]

I'm currently trying via desktop printing, as the printer does not appear in the chooser.

 

[NJRoadfan]

I did some playing around with my A2SERVER VM and determined that netatalk was compiled without cups support, so one has to manually setup printer shares in papd.conf.

The SE/30 should be seeing a network zone called "A2SERVER". Your Mac doesn't appear to be communicating with A2SERVER correctly, at least on the Appletalk end of things. Does TCP/IP work on the SE/30? (can you ping anything?)

One go-to troubleshooting step for AppleTalk I always do is zapping PRAM. Give that a shot..... and remember to re-select the Ethernet card in the Appletalk control panel.

 

[daver_cl]

Yeah, TCP/IP should be working correctly. I can FTP files to my SE/30 from my MacBook Pro via Presenz and the SE/30 can hit webpages.

My PRAM battery is dead (waiting for an Amazon shipment) so it gets (annoyingly) zapped every time I shut down. The SE/30 is definitely not seeing any zones, but I don't quite know why.

 

[NJRoadfan]

Try zapping the PRAM anyway. I've had quite a few Macs with dead batteries and AppleTalk problems that didn't truly reinitialize the PRAM like they should on cold boot.

AdobePS driver can be found here: https://supportdownloads.adobe.com/product.jsp?product=44&platform=Macintosh

AdobePS 8.6 should work on System 7.5.5.

 

[daver_cl]

Thanks. Wow, I hadn't even thought to download direct from Adobe... what are the odds that they're hosting 22 year old drivers???

Well, turns out, pretty unlikely. All of the download links for 8.6 and 8.5.1 are broken  :-(  Fortunately I was able to find it hosted on some random server by searching Google for the filename.

8.6 won't run on 7.5.5 (min requirements are 7.6.1) but I was able to successfully install AdobePS 8.5.1.

With AdobePS installed I tried PRAM reset (assuming it's CMD + Option + P + R) creating a new printer in the desktop printing utility with the AdobePS driver, but it still shows no AppleTalk zones available via Ethernet, in the Chooser (list of available printers is just blank), or in the desktop printer utility.

I'm thinking this is a configuration issue on my SE/30, but I'm not sure what I'm missing.

AppleTalk config has ethernet selected

TCP/IP config has a manual configuration on my network (both the Mac running the VM and the SE/30 are on the same VLAN)

Chooser has AdobePS selected

 

[NJRoadfan]

Weird. Usually Appletalk "just works". I know my machines would even post a message box announcing that you are connected to XX zone. At a minimum, Chooser should be able to see the default file shares on the A2SERVER machine.

 

[NJRoadfan]

While I'm thinking of it.... what networking stack is installed on the SE/30? Open Transport or "Classic" networking (MacTCP etc.)? I know some Ethernet card drivers had problems working with Open Transport and were never updated to support it.

 

[daver_cl]

Asante MacCon ethernet card

OpenTransport 1.1.2

TCP/IP 1.1.2

 

[NJRoadfan]

See this thread:



I would try a clean install of the System software as described in that thread. Seems that networking stacks are a fragile and fussy thing.

 

[superjer2000]

I'm still not following if AppleShare is working on not.  If that's not working, then the printer won't work.  If you create an AppleShare server from your A2SERVER, does the SE/30 see it?  Can you ping other machines from the SE/30?  What is your SE/30 plugged into?  Mine only works when it's plugged into a 10mbit hub.