[sparhawk]

Hi My Father in-law has a laserwriter IIg it is set up and works fine.
He recently asked me what he could do to speed it up, so I looked it up and found he could go from 8Mb of ram to 32Mb I figured that should help.
I purchased the ram, installed it and the printer was faster but I noticed when in the printer utility it only shows the option for 5 or 8 Mb ram it won't show the 32 Mb that's in there. Is this common? Do I have to set up the printer all over again for it to pick up on the ram change? Or is there an updated driver somewhere that I need for this? He is running Os X Jaguar do I need to put panther in there for better results?

Thanks in advance

[sparhawk]

Gee guys don't all answer at once.

[tooki]

Don't bump threads just 3 hours later. If somebody knows the answer, they'll post. (A more detailed thread title would likely have helped, too.)

Tiger doesn't offer anything more than 8MB, either.

In all honesty, you'll likely never notice. Regardless of the driver, the 32MB will help the printer render faster, keep more fonts in memory, and allow more print jobs into the internal queue.

tooki

[sparhawk]

Sorry my intention was not to bump.
I didn't really know how I should have worded it.
I thought if the driver saw the full amount of ram it might utilize it a little better, as I said the printer was faster I just wanted to know if I was getting all I could from the upgrade.
Thank You Tooki.

[mitchell_pgh]

The driver may simply not recognize the extra ram. Check to make sure that the drivers are up to date. If they are (as up to date as they can be) I would call it a day.

Considering the age of the printer, it may not be able to recognize all of the ram.

[sparhawk]

But it says the maximum is 32Mb so why would it not see it?
The only thing I could guess is that apple only supports or supported 8Mb and it could really handel more like alot of there older computers.

[scottiB]

Originally Posted by sparhawk

But it says the maximum is 32Mb so why would it not see it?
The only thing I could guess is that apple only supports or supported 8Mb and it could really handel more like alot of there older computers.

I have an HP Color LaserJet 2550, and while I maxed its memory (160MB: 128 + 32 onboard), the status page says only 96MB. I was assured by HP that it was a limit in the reporting page, and the printer was using all the memory I plunked in.

For you, me guess is that the LW is using it all.

[]

Originally Posted by sparhawk

But it says the maximum is 32Mb so why would it not see it?
The only thing I could guess is that apple only supports or supported 8Mb and it could really handel more like alot of there older computers.

They are like Mac OS X... sometimes you might have more memory than supported, but it won't show up like that... even though it is using that extra memory.

[amazing]

The Laserwriter can go to 32 MB but only if you put in 2 x 16 MB chips. Is that what you did?

[sparhawk]

No, Nobody had said 16MB sticks for that old thing all they had was 4Mb sticks.

[firefly]

If you have a Mac with OS 9, you can run the old Apple Printer Utility (I think that's what it was called...). It will report the installed RAM correctly.

[amazing]

I forget if the Laserwriter IIg has ethernet? Or is it only Appletalk?

Actually, the OS 9 old Apple Printer Utility (which can still be downloaded from Apple, though you have to burrow really deeply into the older downloads) runs quite well under Classic in OS X provided you run Classic with OS 9 Extensions. It needs access to AppleTalk under OS 9, and even if AppleTalk is active in OS X, Classic can't see the OS X version. Here's the link to the download, it's 2/3 of the way down this very long page, under Printing Software Downloads:

AppleCare Support - Older Software Downloads

You can also telnet to the printer, which will come in quite handy if you ever get an Intel Mac (where Classic doesn't work.)

Here's the link to the Laserwriter memory configs

LaserWriter Printers: Memory Configurations

I was judging the IIg on what I know of my 16/600, which only has 2 slots (so you have to use 2 X 16 MB chips, one in each slot. I put a 32 MB chip in one slot and it still only shows up as 16 MB.)

Turns out the IIg has 8 slots so you have to put 8 x 4 MB chips in to get to 32 MB. Or so I assume?

[sparhawk]

No the IIg has eight slots and had eight 1Mb sticks in it and all that was available through We Love Macs was 4Mb and they said it was max per stick for this machine. And yes it is ethiernet.

[amazing]

Also wanted to point out that adding RAM will not make the Laserwriter faster. On my 16/600 adding RAM enabled advanced options, like "photograde" (not sure of the name?)

In other words, maybe it'll handle grayscale better.

[CharlesS]

The LaserWriter IIg does indeed have Ethernet, although to the best of my knowledge it can only be communicated with via AppleTalk over that Ethernet connection. It doesn't support TCP/IP.

[amazing]

On my 16/600 I can set up TCP/IP, but I don't know if you can do that with a IIg.

Appletalk works quite well in OS X, and since the IIg has ethernet, you'll be able to print over a network by adding a router. The only concern might be if you're looking to print by wireless from a laptop. Wireless access points (WAPs) that support Appletalk over the wireless portion are a little rare. The Apple Airport Extremes support Appletalk over wireless, but so do the Buffalo and the Hawking WAPs that I have.

[CharlesS]

For some reason, my parents' Linksys WRT54G works perfectly with AppleTalk, even when printing from wireless, which is weird considering that Linksys doesn't advertise Mac compatibility at all.

Of course, I seem to remember some people with Linksys routers claiming AT didn't work from wireless on theirs, so I guess it's a crapshoot. If you get a printer that can do TCP/IP, then it'll work no matter what.