# AppleTalk to serial port?



## evildan (Jul 21, 2002)

I know this is a long shot. But is there a way to set AppleTalk to communicate via the serial port in an older beige g3?

This is the last task to convince my friend to switch to OSX, so I though I'd check into it for him. He's interested in printing to his serial based printer. 

I wasn't able to find/think of any other way to do this other then with some kind of a UNIX scrip... however I know very little UNIX.

Am I crazy, can this be done?


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## strobe (Jul 22, 2002)

I'll have to assume you meant to say that he has a LocalTalk printer.

A friend had this problem and I fixed it merely by installing Apple's free LocalTalk bridge on an older mac (running Mac OS). The bridge makes LocalTalk printers available on EtherTalk so OS X can see the printer. You may want to check if OS X has the PPD for that printer.

If you don't want to use an older mac there are stand-alone bridges (might be one on ebay) but they usually aren't worth it since printers are cheap.

Installing the LocalTalk bridge in Classic won't work because Classic doesn't have access to the serial port. One possible solution to this is a USB to Serial adaptor and messing with the KEXTs so the OS X driver doesn't load (thus makes it available to Classic). Another possible solution is using some serial-over-IP protocol, but I'm not even aware of one.


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## evildan (Jul 22, 2002)

Is there a way to open OSX to communicate using the serial port?

That's really what I'm after.... why doesn't OSX use this port?


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## strobe (Jul 23, 2002)

OS X already does, Classic does not.

PS: Asking again isn't going to make it happen


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## evildan (Jul 24, 2002)

LOL.. you're right strobe... it is what it is.

But maybe asking again... naw, okay, I get it.


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## lupus (Sep 7, 2002)

I'm afraid I didn't understand why it was "asking again", strobe. I have the same problem, i.e. an AppleTalk capable printer (HP 6MP) that has only a LocalTalk (serial) connection. I know LocalTalkBridge (or LaserWriterBridge) since that's what I have been using so far under OS 8.6. I understood that the Classic environment doesn't have access to the serial ports. Fine, I dont want to run the LocalTalkBridge under Classic, anyway. I can "see" both serial ports in the network control panel (or whatever it is called in OSX), but the only option for configuring them is TCP/IP, no AppleTalk. I know I'm probably completely wrong in this thread: I have nearly no idea about unix, I'm running 10.1.5 on an unsupported 8600, and I don't understand your answer to evildan's question. But this thread exactly addresses my problem (mmh, I believe so, anyway). So please forgive me, should I repeat anything. 

The answer to the question "can I force OSX to talk AppleTalk to my printer via the serial port" is a simple "no"? Is that it? I know even Linux machines can talk Netatalk/AppleTalk to serial printers, and OSX doesn't?

Thanks for your patience


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## strobe (Sep 21, 2002)

no

If there is a UNIX version of the LocalTalk bridge then it could be ported.

If you have an older 68k mac with ethernet, you could use that as a bridge.


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