mac guru alert

[arethinn]

Does anyone know how (if) I can get the Macs in our lab to see the printing queue that's on the (Windows) server? Right now they are all accessing one of our two printers via LPR, and I would dearly love to have print jobs sent from the Macs actually appear in the controllable queue on hydrogen, rather than the direct printing whether we like it or not (and whether the patron pays for it or not). The queue is set up via "printer pooling" of the two printers attached to the server.

I feel this should be possible because there was a time in the past when the Macs did show up in the queue. However, those were days of different hardware and software (PowerMacs with 8.6, an NT server, and 3 Apple LaserWriters; today we have iMacs and G4s with 9.2.2, a Win2K server, and 2 HP LaserJets), so it may be that it's not possible with the current setup. This also seems like it should be possible if only we were running 10.3, but we're not, and that's not something I can change, so that's moot.

Any ideas?

Comments

[twopiearr.livejournal.com]

assuming upgrading to 10.x isn't an option, the short answer is "no, with a but."

The somewhat longer answer is that there's a program called DAVE (http://www.thursby.com/products/dave.html) (acronym for something; search me what it means) that is written specificallly to address the problem you're having (well, specifically to address problems of mac-to-win networking, but the specific problem you're having would fall under that). I'm reasonably sure they offer site licensing, but each Mac that wanted on the print queue would need a copy.

I'm not aware of a non-commercial way to do it pre OS X. Doesn't mean there isn't one, however, as i never really had to network OS 9 before.

[starlightforest.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was pretty much what I had deduced must be going on... that it wasn't printer accessibility, but Windows networking that was the hurdle. I remember seeing similar answer in the Apple kb, that in 9.x you needed third party software to network with Windows, but I was hoping there might have been some trick that applied directly to printing that I had missed. I can suggest software, but don't have any authority to buy it myself. (And of course money is an issue, but let's not go there.) 10.x is now the District standard for new equipment, it's just that we're not up on it and getting it done would be... problematic. Oh well. Thx anyway.