Help me out w/network printing question?

C

chornbe

Who, me?
I've tried a couple of the low-end ethernet/wireless print servers. They... uhm... left a bit to be desired. Some would work fine with a wired solution, some would work ok with a wireless solution only if printed to from Windows. Some would work fine right up until the apple printed to it. I need something a little better.

It's a home network with:

1 windows server (basement - not convenient for hosting printer)
1 red hate server (basement - not convenient for hosting printer)
1 dual boot win/redhat desktop - wired ethernet
1 iBook, location immaterial - wireless ethernet
1 (not yet, but soon) Mac mini, location undetermined

The printer is physically located near to the dual boot desktop, and is currently shared out from the Linux boot and it's working fine. I'm having some issues when it's shared out from the Win boot that I simply don't care enough to fix. Unfortunately, the wife and kids still need the win machine for a while, so iwant to provide printing from any machine/boot config without regard to where, or on which OS it's being hosted.

So... what printer servers have any of you used that might sound like would work for me. I should point out, I'm technically capable of all facets of the network... config, installation, etc... it's what I did for a living a number of years ago before going in to coding full time. The low-end ($40-$70) crap I've tried just isn't full-featured or cross-platform enough for me at the moment.

Thanks.
 
We've been using a DLink 704-P router's built in print server at the office for a while, works pretty good in the mixed environment (2 Win 2kPro desktops, 1 Mac 10.1.5 desktop/file server, 1 Mac 10.3.8 laptop, 1 Dell Laptop dual-boot 2kPro/Mandrake 10) with a HP LaserJet 1200. All (but the Mac desktop) are using IP printing. The LJ is connected via Parallel cable to the router and USB to the Mac desktop.

If I had a permanent Mac at the office running Panther, I'd probably have it connected to that machine instead of the router.
 
Hmm, not a bad option, but the router is, likewise, in the basement. hmmmmm... I'm actually thinking of bumping up my timeline on getting the mac mini.
 
My solution to this would be to move the *nix machine, set up the printer locally, and share witha CUPS server. I can't remember the protocol name right now... Its like 4am... but *nix has something that will allow everything to talk to it. I wish i could remember, and even google isn't helping. I'll post back in the morning if i remember. Basically, my solution is to use a *nix box to share, since, in my experience, linux doesn't like appletalk, and windows doesn't like ANYTHING, its kinda one of those "lower common denominator" issues, and *nix is far more capable, IMHO, of talking to all platforms.
 
Samba? NFS (Network file system) ?

Grr, I was hoping not to have to move the machines from the basement (with all the network connectivity stuff ).

So no one has a print-server device option? Grr... If that, i'll just get the mini sooner rather than later.

Ah well. Thanks.
 
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