Laser printer hangs Mac 9500

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weymest

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I bought an as-new but obsolescent Samsung 1210 laser printer for a friend to use with her even more obsolescent Mac 9500 running Mac OS 8.5.1. The connecting medium is a parallel cable.

I did 2 things contrary to the instructions:

(1) connected the printer to the computer with both of them switched on.

(2) Installed the printer driver from the supplied CD without quitting the Netscape browser/mailer software which was running.

The printer did appear in the LH panel of the Chooser, but would not appear in the RH panel.

Attempting to print a trial document produced the error message 'The Samsung 1210 printer is busy'.

I then switched both devices off, removed and replaced the cable. On switching on the computer again, after the introductory startup screens, booting halted and the computer screen went blank so that to switch it off I had to unplug the power.

Disconnecting the parallel cable allowed bootup to proceed normally.

The Samsung packaging labels quoted system requirement as OS 8.6 or later. The driver software documentation quoted 8.0 or later. Could upgrading from OS 8.5.1 to 8.6 cure it? Any experience of installing a parallel cable causing a machine to hang? Best source for a 8.6 updater?
 
(thread posted in wrong forum. please check before creating a thread. thread moved.)
 
well, with all the problems 8.5.1 had, it doesn't make any sence not to upgrade to 8.6. with it being free to do so, that would be the 1st thing i'd try. then i'd also make sure that no other printer drivers are being loaded just to make sure there are no conflicts.
 
Well sinclair's right about upgrading to OS8.6, but where did all this talk about a parallel cable come from?? It is possible that you have a parallel port on the printer and that this cable might fit the external SCSI port on the 9500, but don't expect a great deal to happen when you hook it up that way.

Right, take it from the top, your standard Mac connection options on a printer of this vintage are likely to be a LocalTalk socket (too slow to be worth considering unless you're only printing text documents) or an ethernet port, which is the best option. You might possibly have a SCSI connection, but these were more often found on plotters or the like, and were never particularly stable.

Use a crossover ethernet patch into the built-in ethernet port on the 9500, unless you're going to piece together a multi-user network with a switched hub.

Then boot the computer, go to the Apple menu, top left corner, control panels, Appletalk. Use the pull-down menu to select the ethernet connection, which will be greyed out if the port is not active. There is an ethernet extension, which will need to be active for Appletalk to use the port, first thing to check if Appletalk can't see any sign of ethernet life.

If all else fails, you will need to set up a two-part LocalTalk network using either the printer or the serial port on the Mac and the LocalTalk socket on the printer. But transfer rates are so slow that it's really not worth the wait for complex documents.

Finally, you can use Apple's laserwriter driver for almost any Postscript laser printer made in the past 20 years or Adobe's PS driver. Access this through the Chooser, once your printer is in a position to talk to the Mac. It's worth using Apple LaserWriter driver 8.6, for which you will probably need the OS of the same number - coincidentally.
 
Right. It would be nice if people trying to help would actually know the printer first, or at least look for its manual. The big, big problem with 1-use-macs's suggestions is that the ML-1210 uses some bizarre Samsung-proprietary protocol instead of Postscript, and it connects using only parallel or USB.

It's not worth the effort to use the parallel port to connect the printer to the Mac. The parallel-look-alike port on the Mac is a sophisticated SCSI bus, which can be directly attached to the hard drive. You use it to attach more drives (hard, Zip, magneto-optical) or scanners or such. You don't use it to attach PC parallel-port peripherals.

There are 2 realistic options, one fairly hard and moderately expensive, and one only a little challenging and pretty cheap.

The harder option is to get a print server device. That's tricky because most print servers either require very specific printers or don't work with Mac. This option requires some careful research before you buy. I don't recommend it.

The easier option is to get a third-party USB card for the 9600. That's why it has so many PCI slots. The Mac-centric retailers might still have USB cards that come with classic MacOS installers, easy to use. I prefer to get a nameless third-party OHCI-compliant USB card (nearly all of them are OHCI), which are in the $10-20 world of cheapness last I checked.

The driver for no-name cards is moderately tricky to use. It's been a while since I looked, but I think you get the USB Adapter Card Support from Apple (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=31132). That page says the driver is installed anyway if you upgrade to MacOS 9.1.
 
Hi all, I have a canon pixma mp210 inkjet printer and I want to refill the cartridges with a kit that I've purchased , the only problem is I don't know how. I sit here looking at the kit wondering if I can get my money back because I don't know how to use I but I've already opened it. How do you refill canon pixma mp 210 inkjet printer cartridges at home with the manual kit? Thanks.
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hp all-in-one printers
 
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Well, I' ve been hearing that buying a laser printer saves you more money than an inkjet ever will. But it seems prohibitive because of the high cost cost of the printer and toner. Then, there are health risks involved. Is it really more economical (or healthy) to buy a laser printer? How much do I save by buying a laser printer as opposed to an inkjet? Thank you very much in advance.
 
Hi Jason & welcome :)

Here is a link explaining how to refill the cartridges:

I want to refill the ink cartridges

I too have that model and seriously, it's an entry level printer that I only bought it for it's scanning ability. I wanted to get into scanning my photos and have since come to the realisation that I should have spent another AUS$50 and bought a flat-bed scanner.

That model isn't a good choice if you need to do a lot of printing. It doesn't have enough features and if you paid around about what I did (AUS$50) then I would think about it.

I have a Canon IP4000 that I paid about AUS$200 for 2 or 3 years ago, which is my dedicated printer and it was money well spent. From what I see around, the cost of good printers is coming down all the time, like cameras etc.
 
jason101 - Isn't there instructions with the refill kit? Those kits usually mean that you refill the cartridge by piercing a seal with a syringe, or other filling device. The instructions would give you generic directions for doing that.
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All things being equal, an inkjet printer gives you a couple of hundred pages before you need to replace/refill. A laser printer typically goes several thousand pages before a refill. That's your difference in cost - the per-page cost. A typical laser printer is faster in operation than an inkjet.

How much do you save? It depends on how much you print, and how much you want to spend. You can spend a lot of money on a pro-level, wide carriage inkjet printer - some go for $10-15,000
Or, you can also find new laser printers for $200
 
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