OS X printing through Win 2k server

R

retracid

Registered
sup mac people,

i got a couple macs and 2 PCs; one of which is a win 2k server that i would like to setup print services on for all these machines.

I though i had it all figured out-
-turn on appltalk in OS X and configure appletalk on windows
-Share the printer on the server
-install print drivers for both machines

i can manage to send a print job from the mac to the win 2k server- and it seems to process the job normally, but the printer prints an error page that reads something like this:


SYSTEM

%%[Error:undefined;offending command: @ ]%%%%
%%[Flushing:rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored]%%


i have 2 epson stylus printers hooked up to the server, and they both print this same error message on any mac, but the PCs print test pages without a problem.

any ideas? thanks in advance.
 
As much trouble this has caused people, is really pretty easy to get this to work. In the Services of W2K, there is a service called, I think, TCP/IP printing, or IP printing. What this does when started will allow you to print from any OS to an IP address.

So go into Services under the administrative tools, start the TCP/IP Print Server (this is what it's called) and start it and set it to start automatically.

then make sure that the printer you want to print to is selected as the default.

then on your Mac's, just print to an IP address and everything should be good to go!!

Hope this works for ya.
 
all required services are running(i think), and i tried printing by IP before and i got the same error message (and it seemed to go alot slower).

whats the format for specifing a printer IP address on a Mac?
i.e. windows : //192.168.1.1/785epx

I just spent about 2 hours trying to get this to work through appletalk and it seems like it wont go.

The error message above should read:

%%[Error:undefined;offending command: @ EJL ]%%

The windows machine spools the print job without a problem, so im guessing the problem is somewhere between the server machine and the printer itself? im about to give up. peace
 
do you need to run appletalk?? I wouldn't. but in order to print from the mac, OS X anyway, go to the print center and choose 'IP Printing' just put in the IP address of your print server in the box, nothing more, nothing less.
 
On the Windows box, configure the particular printer driver to print to a file. You can do this in the properties dialog of the particular printer in the Windows printer control panel.

Now repeat your print job and have a look into the resulting file afterwards, i.e. open this file with a text editor.

You should either see 1) the error message you mentioned or 2) the postscript code of the document you printed.

Case 1) The problem occurs on your Mac. You probably have a gimpprint driver installed. Gimpprint uses ghostscript as a software-rip and unfortunately does not understand all postscript syntax variants - although they're getting better and better.

Solution: Check if a newer ghostscript version is available, install it and see if it cures the problem. Or try a different document (i.e. try to print from another program) to learn which documents work and which don't. If you depend on gimpprint/ghostscript and they don't fix the issue you are somewhat lost, which means that you simply must avoid these programs/documents which don't work.

Case 2) The printer is causing the problem. You feed it some postscript code which it does not understand. This is probably a driver or ppd file issue on the Mac. Since we don't know any details on your configuration and probably don't have access to such printer in a comparable configuration there is less chance that you find help here. Double-check again if you're using the appropriate drivers, that's the only thing I can tell.
 
When i do IP printing, my mac gets to 92% complete of sending the print job, then it stops. This is frustrating and seems to limit my options to appletalk printing once again. Also i would like the option of choosing the default printer on the remote machine, not the server; and it seems like appletalk is the only solution.

I installed Gimp-print CUPS 4.2.5, and it doesnt seem to do much other than give me a larger selection of printers.

I printed to file like mentioned above, and im not sure if what i was seeing was the post-script code or just garbled nonsense from my mac. It was composed of mostly squares and unreadable lines. The only thing that i saw in this code that relates to the error message was the EJL in the beginning of the document.

So if i were to update this ghostscript, where would i find it?
 
While I've printed from Windows-to-Mac, I've not tried Mac-to-Windows.

The first thing you should really do is uninstall AppleTalk on your Win2k box. This is probably Microsoft's implementation of AppleTalk for Windows so you know it's not going to work right. You'll also notice, AppleTalk never survived another release of Windows.

I'll re-reply to this once I get upstairs and can mess with the rest of the Mac/Windows equipment there.
 
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