I am beginning the transition from the PC to the Mac OS by purchasing the Mac-Mini. I have some questions that you seasoned Mac users will probably find trivial, but for me, all is new territory.
My question involves interfacing the Mini to a usb printer. I have purchased used HP Laserjets on ebay very reasonably. I currently have an HP 2100N with a JetDirect 600N network interface card. Can I connect the network cable from that card directly to the network connection on the Mini? Is there any Snow Leopard drivers that will recognize the printer or 600N network card?
As an alternative, I could purchase an HP 2200D with a usb connection. Will the Snow Leopard recognize some of these older HP laserjets with usb connections?
I have been doing some more reading on this site and it seems that some of the older laserjets are problematic because HP does not have Mac drivers. Looks like I need to buy a newer laserjet printer.
I have been doing some more reading on this site and it seems that some of the older laserjets are problematic because HP does not have Mac drivers. Looks like I need to buy a newer laserjet printer.
Before rushing out and buying a new computer, try with some generic drivers! Did this with an old printer of mine and it worked a treat!
I have been doing some more reading on this site and it seems that some of the older laserjets are problematic because HP does not have Mac drivers. Looks like I need to buy a newer laserjet printer.
When I upgraded to SL my HP2600n did not work and there were no HP drivers for SL. So I downloaded their newest driver, 2007 vintage I recall, and it works fine.
You can't just connect from one Ethernet port to another without specialized software to fix the pin mismatch in the cable. If you have a network hub or switch they should communicate just fine. Generic drivers usually work just fine for Macs printing to HPs
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I got a mini a few weeks ago.
Getting it going was quite painless until it came to finding a printer the OS would recognize. I had an HP Deskjet 940c which seems to be recognized by every OS on earth but the ink has dried out and the replacement ink costs more than buying a new printer. Anyways, surrounded by 5 printers I discovered open source OSX drivers for my Konica Minolta 2400W laser color printer which has been sitting unused with almost full cartridges for over a year. Printed a few times, all seems good except for it is not able to check the toner levels.
I also noticed that many new printers don't have drivers in OSX, you still need to dl them.
You can't just connect from one Ethernet port to another without specialized software to fix the pin mismatch in the cable. If you have a network hub or switch they should communicate just fine. Generic drivers usually work just fine for Macs printing to HPs
No idea what you are talking about here regarding "specialized software to fix the pin mismatch." I am guessing you could use a crossover cable or if you are using a newer Mac it already has Auto-MDIX which will do it for you. You would be better off just getting a cheap Ethernet switch though or getting a printer with a USB connection that is known to work with the Mac.
