Dear 68k afficionados,

I need the Desktop Printer Utility referenced in the ‚How to print‘ article, but both links (OS 7 and OS9) are broken.

Anyone out there with some helping bits?

Best,
KnuddlMac

You can find Laserwriter 8 software downloads on the Macintosh Garden site. For printing from BasiliskII, choose version 8.5.1 or later.

You made my day!

6 install disks, whow! This was hughe.

My postscript printer can't be allocated. - I need to digg some deeper...

Thanks for your kind help, Robert!

KnuddlMac

What kind of printer is it and how is it wired to your network? What protocol does it use?

It is an old HP DeskJet Colour 2550, connected via usb to a SBC running Debian with a CUPS print server (v1.7.5). Network connection via T/base100 twisted pair Ethernet.
Supported protocols IPP, LPD and Socket.

The print server is already in production serving MacOS and Windows like a charm for a couple of years. CUPS provides a great API to program the print server and writing your own drivers.
Would be awesome to show available printers in the Chooser.
But from what I read here in the forum, AppleTalk support gets tricky.

I already have BasiliskII up and running using AppleShare on macOS Sierra. Also the Chooser for AppleShare lists available AFP servers in the local net, but AppleTalk is a different beast.

Do you have experience with CUPS in relation to AppleTalk?
For today I‘ll try to connect BII via IPP or LPD.

Best,
KnuddlMac

Follow the guide at https://emaculation.com/doku.php/applet ... heepshaver in order to set up Basilisk II with AppleTalk. It might help to run your macOS host with a bridged network setup (see viewtopic.php?f=20&t=8314#p56752 ).

Depending on your version of Debian, you could install a2server and have it share the printer via PAP (AppleTalk Printer Access Protocol). I have written a guide on how to build and install an AppleTalk print server. As I gather from your posts you would probably recognize the parts of the guide you need.

In my case the server shares an old AppleTalk printer to modern systems via CUPS. As you want to do the opposite you wouldn't actually need the PAP backend mentioned in the guide. See https://emaculation.com/doku.php/applet ... osx#fn__24 (note #24) for a link explaining how to do it the way you require.

If you don't succeed with AppleTalk (or rather not use it), the bridge setup might help to establish the connection using LPD.

Thanks you for your detailed description!

I took this afternoon and evening to set up my print server with your instructions.
This is a different machine than the file sharing one, so no worries.

Same result: File Sharing works great, but I can't see any shared printers.
Same service runs great with recent macOS builds, but no success with Macintosh Classic environment and a genuine SE/30 connected to the same LAN.

Interesting info in the error log:

E [10/Jan/2018:19:56:26 +0000] Unknown browse protocol "CUPS" ignored.
E [10/Jan/2018:19:56:26 +0000] Unknown browse protocol "pap" ignored.

This is CUPS 1.7.5 running.
a2server-version: 151

pi@PitsPrintServer:~ $ papstatus -p HP_color_LaserJet_2550_series
HP_color_LaserJet_2550_series:LaserWriter@*: NBP Lookup failed


...and I just recognize that OS10 also can't print anymore. - I screwed it up and need to stabilize my system first.

I have the 'modern' printing system under macOS Sierra up- and running again.

Still no classic printing connectivity on the classic side.

IP connectivity is provided as I can write/read from the AppleShare on the same system.

I'll take a rest now and will restart tomorrow. J


Thank you for your kind help and support!

Do you know by chance what could have caused this error message?

it is triggered by the System 7 printer:




Launching a job like:

lp test.txt

on the print server results in a correct, simple printing job.
But no connection from the chosen printer. Here I assume some problems in the paps.conf file.




Any idea what could cause this -5751 printing error?

I have no idea, I'm afraid. The only thing that catches my eye is that your first line reads "LaserWriter@A2SERVER:\" i.s.o. "LaserWriter:\" as written in the reddit.com guide. But then again that could be correct and even required as you are using "A2SERVER" i.s.o. the standard AppleTalk zone "*".

I don't have that much knowledge about all that stuff. That is also why it took me a lot of time to build the AppleTalk server and write the guide. I try to gather the information I find so others can profit from it as well. But it was yet others who shared all the bits of knowledge I required to build the system. Those are the actual "specialists".

Myself, I have never tried to share a non-AppleTalk printer via AppleTalk. I just thought it would be nice to reference the post at reddit.com which adespoton pointed to originally. But if you can figure it out I will gladly add a link to your solution in the guide.


Do you mean write/read from A2SERVER? If not, could you try? And if it works via IP, switch that off in classic Mac OS to force it to connect using AppleTalk. Does that work? If yes, I don't know why PAP doesn't work. If not, something is blocking transfer via AppleTalk.
You might think through your network topology. E.g., I once had a switch that wasn't able to transport AppleTalk.

BasiliskII on macOS Sierra, an old SE/30 and a Quicksilver with Classic OS9 are finally running with Apple Share and Printing via Ethernet!

Your hint about the AppleTalk zone was the triggering element. - I did notice that since I ran A2SERVER my other AppleShare (without specific 'ZONE') did vanish and the AppleTalk ControlPanel did state that the Mac is connected to zone 'A2SERVER'.
In order to test impact, I removed the zone info from A2SERVER, restarted NETATALK on the Linux and le voilá, on the Mac the print job did finish with success. - But no printer output!

In the next step I tested with the and command on the Linux console what yields in a successful print. - OK, Mac works, Linux works, but they are like old people and don't talk with each other!

After a bit of twiggeling, amending the /usr/local/etc/netatalk/papd.conf file with the correct spooler entry did make the trick:



This was a long trial, and mostly caused by a munch of different components on my Linux board. - I was running CUPS 1.7.5 and put the A2SERVER on top of it. The result was a confusing mess of config files with different versioning.

Now I need a break and will create step-by-step guides on:


[1] How to set-up BasiliskII with full AppleShare and Printing support via Ethernet on a macOS Sierra

[2] Set-up a netatalk and CUPS Server

Especially the 2nd bullet is compelling, as I am running a 10€ old HP LaserJet 2550 and a 40€ Linux board.
This was the best Macintosh System 7 extension since I bought my PowerBook100 !

My praise to your comment about the ZONE info!

Wow, that sounds great!
Glad the zone info hint helped to solve it.

Once your guides are ready let me know and I will reference them.


EDIT:

It seems to be possible to do this for even less using a C.H.I.P. See comment #1 of my guide: https://emaculation.com/doku.php/applet ... _osx#fn__1
(You have to compile a new kernel, though.)

Absolutely, the octacore ARM bigLITTLE board I am running is totally overpowered for that purpose and your C.H.I.P. solution a great alternative.

Thanks for your encouragement to start with the guides, I'll plan on carving-out some time in the coming week for that purpose.

We must be almost at the place where someone could buy a simple C.H.I.P. or Pi Zero and drop a preconfigured image on it for instant AppleShare file serving from System 2 through OS X 10.13. I think most of the missing pieces have been filled in over the past year.

Thanks to Thomas Kaiser et al for File Sharing and Net Boot, the A2SERVER image for the RasPi could do the trick.
Printing is disabled by default, maybe too dependent on the type of printer being used.

I think I‘ve seen an image somewhere over the past week.

Same should apply for the C.H.I.P. based configuration.
Would be great to have a plug&play system available. Still the commercial distribution could be difficult. Some ship the SBC as a seperate SKU to the SD–Card. So for the C.H.I.P. I‘d guess a downloadable image file could solve it.

The automated configuration could becoma a challenge. In general it was necessary to start the console for one or the other parameter. But you are right, it is really getting more and more easy to run a Linux based system without expert level knowledge. J

There's a Raspberry Pi image over here: http://ivanx.com/rasppleii/
Might that have been the one you saw?

According to that site the image has an outdated version of A2SERVER and some other stuff. But there's an easy way to update everything with just one command. Printing capabilities have to be added manually.

I'm using my Banana Pi based A2SERVER AppleTalk NAS with printer sharing since more than a year now and it still runs flawlessly. Looks like Ivan Drucker did a really good job with A2SERVER.

You are right, here I've seen the A2SERVER image for the RasPi and useful hints around configuration settings.

So I stand corrected, it was Ivan and not Thomas. - My praise to Ivan!