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I thought it might be useful to have a thread where people with Intel Macs can post whether their peripherals (eg. printers, scanners) work with OS X x86 or not.

I certainly would want to wait before jumping in with an Intel switch. All my extra hardware works fine under OS X for PowerPC at the moment. I would not be surprised if none of it worked on Intel Macs, but I can't test the stuff out since I don't own an Intel Mac.

My hardware of concern:

M-Audio MIDIsport MIDI interface
Epson 1640SU Photo scanner
Canon LiDE 35 scanner
Canon i960 inkjet printer
Samsung ML-4600 laser printer

For you guys with Intel Macs, what peripherals have you tried?

According to this post, printing to an HP PSC 2500 works fine with the old drivers.

The M-Audio probably won't work right now, since I think all their MIDI interfaces require kernel extensions (kexts), which don't work under Rosetta. On the other hand, I believe the IOKit is supposed to provide an abstraction layer for developing kexts without needing direct hardware access. So it wouldn't surprise me if they could be recompiled for Intel as easily as apps (someone please correct me if I'm way off). We'll see whether peripheral makers get on the ball about doing so.

Inkjet printers will probably just work, since at least the HP, Epson, and Canon ones I've had have required neither kexts nor Preference Panes for full functionality. I would bet the same is true for lasers. I've never used a scanner on OS X, so I don't know if they use custom kexts or go through a built-in one...

P.S. Eug: have you asked a mod to sticky this thread? Seems like it'll be useful for some time to come..

Anyone have any idea if a digidesign M-Box will work? I know that pro tools does not, but can I still use my mbox through garageband?

Sounds promising.

OK, so it's looking positive for the printer drivers at least. I'm especially worried about the Samsung laser since it was discontinued years ago, and the driver hasn't been updated since the early Panther days (although it works fine in Tiger). I'm also worried about the Epson scanner since it's also very old. At least the Canon scanner is a relatively current model.

I have not asked them. I figure if it this thread becomes useful with time then they can decide to do that themselves. I rarely look at stickified old threads anyway.

[stuck, and the unnecessary word "thread" removed from the thread title --tooki]

It would be nice to know if any scanner will work with an Intel iMac. I have an Epson Perfection 2540 Photo, myself.

Slim

I want to buy an Intel iMac and I was wondering if a Canon Pixma MP450 would be compatible?

I have a Canon Pixma MP780 and wonder the same thing.

my accessories of concern:

Logitech MX 1000
Griffin PowerMate
Canon LiDE 80 scanner
Canon i860 printer

I know the first two dont, but I'd think the last two do, any info?

Can anyone answer my question?

This is from http://www.xlr8yourmac.com:


" ...This is from an Apple training course in reference to the new iMac Core Duo machine.
-Mike Cascioli
Apple Certified Desktop Technician
Mac Business Solutions,Inc.

"Will printers/scanners/misc. devices work?
Nearly every printer driver, plus many more, that shipped with Tiger is included in Mac OS X for Intel as a universal binary.

If you only have a PPC printer driver, it should run in Rosetta.

For scanners and other devices, these likely will not work properly in Rosetta, customers should check with the vendor for a universal binary version of the driver/plug-in."

Another reader said:

" The installer ships with a whole bunch of printer drivers similar to the installer for PPC-only machines.
An EPSON Scanner Image Capture native driver is also installed by default. Image Capture application can be used to scan using older PPC-only TWAIN data sources either using the Image Capture UI or the TWAIN UI.
-Baskaran "

If any reader has an Intel CPU Mac has notes on working/not working printers and/or scanners let me know.

Another member said in an iMac thread:

Things are looking up in terms of the printer drivers then. Actually, likely my first Intel Mac will be a laptop (probably within 6 months), and I don't have much attached to my laptop for obvious reasons. The only thing that I'd really need support for on my laptop is printer drivers. And even then, the way it would be used is that it would be sharing a printer over the network. That printer would be attached to my PPC iMac. (PPC iMac for now, Intel iMac maybe in a year.)

Is it correct to assume that if a PPC printer driver works on Intel, then it should also work for shared printers? To clarify:

Printer attached to PowerPC Mac, running PowerPC printer drivers.
Laptop sharing printer over the network. Laptop is Intel, running PowerPC printer drivers.

(My Samsung laser printer does not have drivers built into Tiger.)

---

Also, it'd be nice to hear more about scanners, since it seems like that's going to be the main issue for most people here.

Well, if you look at this page's listing of what Rosetta won't translate, it seems plausible that it will do printer drivers.

OTOH, I thought somebody said (somewhere 'round these forums) that it won't do any kind of plug-ins, and /Library/Printers certainly contains files ending in ".plugin". I wonder if anybody who's familiar with OS X's printing architecture will show up here and comment..

So far, there is nothing too old.
I have a circa 1995 GCC Elite 1212 laserprinter (similar to apple 16.640 & Xerox Docuprint 12)
my G3 with OSX 10.1.5 refused to deal with it, so I had to eboot into 9 to get it to print.
The InteliMac and 10.4.4 alowed it as a generic postscript printer and fully recognized it, allows for full setup of the priners memory and prints without a hitch.
I also setup a ethernet hub with the G3 and Elite 1212 and can print from both machines.
I also networked my G3 to the Intel and it also recognized the SCSI scanner attached to the G3.
It also has no problem with an USB Epson 1250 scanner.

I did download the Adobe Creative Suite trial, in about 7 hours with a DSL, and all those work fine, albeit under Rosetta ( the spinning beach ball is a dead give away) and they seem to run fine.
While my old G3 is a 66Mhz bus speed I do see a speed bump with the Intel and CS version of Adobe.

What I do have that shows my own mac insanity is the pair of Apple Powered Speaked attached to my new iMac...a nice blend of the old and new.

The most glaring problem is lack of proper plug-ins to allow Flash Player or Shockwave to install and run on iMac Intel with Tiger. Cannot install either, which means I cannot access XM Radio via Safari, IE, or Firefox. Macromedia (now owned by Adobe) acknowledges problem and "is working on the problem".

HP 7310 All-in-one works fine.

That's funny, since Flash and Shockwave seem to be working OK here (I used the migration assistant to transfer all my settings from my old computer). Can you give me an example of a website that doesn't work for you?

M-Audio pledges support for Intel-Macs

"M-Audio said that it is currently working on Intel-Mac support for the rest of its USB interfaces"

Unfortunately my trusty iSub that worked great with my iMac DV 400mhz does not seem to be working with my new intel imac 20". It is not recognized anywhere in my sound preferences. Any thoughts?