Anyone successfully using a serial printer in OS X?

P

powermd

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I have a Keyspan USB Serial adapter to connect my Laserwriter 4/600PS to my new G4/733. The printer is turned on, and all cables are securely connected. The adapter is plugged into one of the two main USB ports on the tower, and the serial cable is plugged into port 1 of the adapter (printer port). The driver is installed and the device appears to be working.

In 9.2 the printer name does not appear in the chooser when I select Laserwriter 8, and it does not appear in Print Center in OS X. A dialog box suggested that I activate Appletalk in the Network system preference panel- where is it?? I opened "Network" and Appletalk is no where to be seen.

Please help!
 
I have a Keyspan Twin Serial 28x model, I grabed the beta X drivers, as far as I can tell (Technicaly they are working properly) but only as an availible device ID via Project Builder. I have not been able to use anything serial via normal software, but have been able to talk to a STAMP (http://www.parallax.com) and MINI SSC II circuit board via writing an app in Project Builder.

What I believe is... 10.1 will allow keyspan to write drivers that work like the OS 9 drivers where the ports show up as a by gosh Serial an Printer (Serial) ports...... This is the indication I got from an e-mail I sent to their OSX team.

[ Currently the the ports are accessed via usb device id and not emulating Mac Serial ports ]



But then again, this is just my experience ;)
 
Dude, please post anything you figure out as far as controlling basic stamps with os x goes. I'd love to dive into that!
 
Basic Stamps and such rock!, as a hobby I mess with "Smart" robots using such microcontrolers and various circuits I buy or make.... solutions cubed (http://www.solutions-cubed.com/) , lynxmotion (http://www.lynxmotion.com/), robotstore (http://www.robotstore.com/), coolrobots ( www.coolrobots.com ) and a good raw material source such as http://www.OnlineMetals.com are a few good places to start with that stuff ....


But a funny things is... I learned over half of the folks in the BattleBots field use Macs, and just about all of them use Basic Stamps... Yet Parallax nor anyone else has made a Pbasic programmer for the Mac... What the trick is and I learned about it from one of the Battlebot teams.. is what you have to to to program a stamp is use virtual PC... all you need is a dos partition.. and right now you have to boot into classic, in order to use a USB->Serial device and it show up as com1 or whatever in VPC....

This is just for the programing of the Stamp... Because you have to use PBasic to program it... Other Serial circuits and devices, you can simply write a program your self that prints and reads to a serial port off you mac.. in the case of OS X, it's a very major pain... I have an Old Motorola Starmax I still use as my primary box using REALBasic as the language to write interface programs.. I have been successful using X and a keyspan adaptor, but only haver pulling half my hair out learning Project Builder.. It's not clean and simple yet .. but the word I get is... We should be able to Use REALBasic in X and the Keyspan adapotors pretty soon ... ;)

So I'm waiting for that to happen before using X with this stuff ....

I'll be glad to share any info if you have any questions ... ;)

cheers
 
I talked to Apple and the only way to connect my Laserwriter 4/600PS to my G4 Quicksilver is to get a LOCALTALK TO ETHERNET adapter. Even though the printer connects to a serial port with a serial cable, you still need the thing hooked up to Localtalk somehow. I'm still unclear exactly what Localtalk is, but the Apple support guy said it was hardware, not software, which is why the adapter is needed. Umm, okay.

Thanks to all who replied to this thread.

Craig
 
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