Printing to Appletalk Epson via TCP/IP?

B

bunner bob

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I have an Epson Stylus Photo 1270 with an attached Axis 1440 print server (which gives it an ethernet port, and supports Appletalk and, supposedly, TCP/IP printing).Just bought a Netgear wireless router, which unfortunately doesn't support Appletalk. At least it doesn't wirelessly - no problem printing via a wired machine.

So I'm trying to set up to print via TCP/IP, and I'm not quite sure how to go about it. In my Printer Setup Utility I have both "IP Printing" and "Epson TCP/IP" as options. Under "IP Printing" I can either do LPD/LPR or Internet Protocol Printing. I tried all these options, entering the IP number shown on the info sheet printed when I press the "test" button on the Axis server. In all cases when I try to print the printer can't be found.

The subnet mask for the printer is same as that of the router. The printer does say its "default router" is 192.168.123.254, while the wireless router is 192.168.0.1 - I wonder if that could be the problem. I don't recall exactly how to change the setting in the printer - I think it might require an OS 9 app, though it might be possible via Unix.

Any suggestions on what I should look at/try?

- Bob
 
Multiple issues.
You'll need to use the Gimp-Print driver for the print server/Epson combination, because Epson's driver only supports direct connection and Mac-Mac sharing. Gimp-Print is installed by default with Panther, or is a download for Jaguar:
http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/MacOSX.php3
You need the server queue name as well as IP address for either LPR or IPP. It is probably listed in the docs and some likely guesses are lp, lp1, lpt, lpt1.

Good luck.
 
I have a Stylus 900n (where the "n" = "network) and the Epson drivers work just fine. I have 5 static IP addresses, so I gave one to the printers. I didn't have to do anything funny or even have to worry about the built-in print server.

Why does your's need something special?

gsahli: Isn't GIM just for USB attached printers? ...and not ethernet printers?
 
Sorry, not all print servers are made equal. The built-in Epson ones are the only ones that the Epson-provided drivers recognize.
If you were asking about Gimp-Print, it (the set of drivers) was written to use cups - the print control/spool system Apple has chosen to use in OS X. The advantage of that is that the drivers work with ALL the cups comm modes (called backends in cups terminology).
So, the Epson-provided drivers bypass (part of) cups and provide only the comm modes that Epson has originally made the printer for.

I hope that explains it.
 
I'm having trouble getting Gimp-Print (or anything) to work with my Epson 1270/Axis 1440 combo. I printed the test page listing the ethernet address of the printer, and TCP/IP is enabled, but for one, I'm unable to ping the printer. Should I be able to, or will a printer not respond to a ping?

No settings in Gimp-Print seem to work. I select IP Printing in Printer Utility, select Internet Printing Protocol in Printer Type (though I've also tried LPD/LPR), set the ip number correctly and tried "AXIS3F8793" and "lpr" as printer queue names and it never connects to the printer.

I can print fine wired, using Appletalk and Epson's own drivers.

Any tips?

- Bob
 
OK - solved one big problem. The Axis was set to use a different router address than my wifi router. Got the Epson all set now and it's returning pings. But I still can't get my Gimp-Print settings worked out.

First field: IP Printing
Second field: do I select "Internet Printing Protocol" or "LPD/LPR"?
When I select the first, I get "busy" errors when printing. When I select the second, the print queue (on the Mac) just stops every time I try to print
Third field: 192.168.0.49
Fourth field: I've tried "AXIS3F8793", "AXIS3F8793_LPT1", "lp" and leaving it blank

Help!
 
Yeee-haw! Got it! Found the Axis manual online and dug into the part on setting up Unix LPD/LPR queues. Turns out the queue name is "lpt1". So the settings are:

IP Printing
LPD/LPR
192.168.0.49
lpt1
and of course the right Gimp-Print driver for the 1270

Man - been working on this for months, on and off. Hopefully this will help someone else who needs to print to this printer and can't use Appletalk.

- Bob
 
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