aftermarket software needed

[srluebke]

I recently purchased a used HP 1050C large format printer and am having trouble getting my MacBook Pro to communicate with the printer via a USB-to-Parallel adapter cord. I received the following advice from someone familiar with this problem:

"You may have to get an aftermarket program. This plotter does not have postscript which is the language used by MAC. It has hp gl2 and I think there are some aftermarket programs that can convert the data sent to the printer so it understands what is has to print. HP printers that work with MAC have a designation of PS or in the case of the 1050C the MAC model is 1055CM."

Any help and recommendations for the software they are speaking about would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you so much,

Stefan

 

[gsahli]

Postscript "was" the page formatting language used by Macs for many years. Apple is in the process of changing over to PDF, which is closely related to postscript.
For the USB-parallel connection, install this:
usbtb - high performance USB printing

HP-GL/2 is the standard print language supported by this plotter. HP-GL/2 is an open standard, and there are several choices for driver that "should" work.
The one I'm aware of is ghostscript. It accepts postscript and outputs HP-GL/2.
You need ghostscript and foomatic from here:
macosx/foomatic | The Linux Foundation

Then, you need to get creative to create a PPD file. Download the postscript one for the 1050c from:
Printer: HP DesignJet 1050C | OpenPrinting - The Linux Foundation

Now, you need a non-postscript PPD for a similar plotter:
(get D-jet 500)
Driver: cdnj500 | OpenPrinting - The Linux Foundation

You'll have to experiment now - open the PPDs side by side, and replace all the page size sections, and the driver name wherever you find it. You want to end up with a non-postscript version of a PPD for the 1050c. (The Djet 500 PPD is the keeper - paste from the 1050c postscript one.)

By the way, ghostscript is the actual driver/postscript convertor, foomatic interprets the PPD and creates very long "print" commands for ghostscript to execute.

Sorry it's not easy!
Come back with questions.