Mac and pc printer sharing?

Hi Everyone!

Can anyone help and explain this in very plain english, as I'm not very good at hardware stuff!

I've got a mac and my boyfs got a pc. He wants to connect and use my printer, which is usb plugged into my mac.

We share a broadband connection and the whole house is networked up.

Can someone explain how we can connect him. I've tried looking on the network but I have no idea what I'm looking for or how to do it! I've gone into system preferences and turned on printer sharing, what else do I need to do? And why can't he see my machine, actually while i'm asking how do I connect to his pc to share files etc?

Thanks all!

with regards to sharing the printer I really do not know since I use a printer server.

with regards to sharing your files with him, it should be fairly easy you can go to GO in finder and click on network. You should be able to see all the networked computers there, but sometimes you are unable to to that so you can hit command k to oppen a box where you will type in smb://192.168.x.x where the x's are the last 2 entries in your boyfriends computer's ip address. and it should then mount your boyfriends computer to your desktop after requesting a password from you. I hope this helps.

Small giraffe said:

Hi Everyone!

Can anyone help and explain this in very plain english, as I'm not very good at hardware stuff!

I've got a mac and my boyfs got a pc. He wants to connect and use my printer, which is usb plugged into my mac.

We share a broadband connection and the whole house is networked up.

Can someone explain how we can connect him. I've tried looking on the network but I have no idea what I'm looking for or how to do it! I've gone into system preferences and turned on printer sharing, what else do I need to do? And why can't he see my machine, actually while i'm asking how do I connect to his pc to share files etc?

Thanks all!

Click to expand...

This is a quick rundown for OS X Tiger, and Windows XP.

First turn on Printer Sharing.
System Preferences > Print & Fax > Click Sharing
Check the box of the USB printer
Click back to "Printing" tab
Click "Printer Setup"
The print setup manager will open, select "Name & Location" from the drop down. Note what it says for "Queue Name", you'll need this below. It should read something like "Epson_Stylus_740" or similar, include the underscore characters ( _ )

Close Preferences

On his computer, (running XP I will assume)
Go to Printers and Faxes, Add a Printer,
Select "Local Printer attached to this computer" and uncheck "Automatically detect". (Even though it's not local to his, read on)
Select "Create a new port" and select "LPR Port" from the drop down.
Click Next
Name or address of server providing lpd: <your mac IP here>
Name of printer or print queue: <queue name here, as discovered above>
Click OK
Next will popup the list of manufacturers for the driver selection, select the make/model from the list, click Next.
Enter a different name if like, select as default printer, click Next
Choose whether or not to share this printer from XP, click Next
Print a test page, click Next
Click Finish.

That's it.

Crossover cable "network"

I have a similar situation, only my two computers are right next to each other. One is an eMac, the other is a PC using XP. The two computers are connected with a Crossover cable and communicate just fine.

I've followed the above instructions but the networked printer on XP is not being seen when I try to print.

I'm using a Canon Pixima iP3000 and the Mac is using OSX10.3.7

Use the Add a Printer wizard in windows. (as we all know windows users still believe there are little wizards in their pc's)

select network printer
select connect to a printer on the internet
type the url http://the.mac.ip.address:631/printers/the_printer_queue_name
(case sensitive)
Use a post scropt driver like a Apple Laser Writer or a post script driver by the manufacturer of the printer.

And yes,....make sure printer sharing turned on for the mac.