[kennedy]

I've been wrestling with these printer driver mysteries for three days now... going in endless circles... this is actually worse than the worst DOS interrupt number conflict problem I've ever had... I own Macs so I don't have to deal with this $#!+... sorry, I am ranting...


Desperately seeking a printer driver guru...

1) Where does OS X record what print driver to use with what printer?

2) Same question, but for shared printers?

3) How does OS X decide what print driver to use for a shared printer in the first place?

4) If OS X decides to use one print driver for a shared printer, how do you later tell it to use a different print driver?

5) If #4 isn't possible, can I at least make OS X forget its prior choice of print driver so that I can hopefully make it choose again?


Why am I asking these questions?

On my PB 12, I made the mistake of trying to print to a shared printer for which I had not loaded its printer driver. When you do that, it queues them up but can never figure out how to talk to the IPP host.

Figuring out my error, I went and installed the proper printer drivers and, with those printers hooked to my USB ports, was able to print no problem. Returning the printers to their original computer (which is sharing them), I tried to use them. Unfortunately, the stupid PowerBook still remembers the old (wrong) printer driver it chose to use for those shared printers. Same useless behavior. I've tried everything I can think of to get it to reset that and use the proper printer driver.

How do I know its using the wrong printer driver? Because the print dialog is the generic one rather than the one specific to my printer's driver.

Please help... someone has to understand this printer driver $#!+... please... I hope...


Thanks.

[Chris Grande]

Select the printer, click cmd-i, a get info window will open for the printer. Select Printer Model from the drop down list and configure away. When done click Apply Changes and then close the window. Hope this helps.

[kennedy]

Originally posted by Chris Grande:
Select the printer, click cmd-i, a get info window will open for the printer. Select Printer Model from the drop down list and configure away. When done click Apply Changes and then close the window. Hope this helps.

Sounded good, anyway. However, when I compare the settings for my direct installed Lexmark X83 (which uses the right driver) and my shared Lexmark X83 (which uses the wrong driver), they are exactly the same except for "@ServerName" in the names panel and "at ServerName" in the models panel. There's nothing in the models list of either one.

Sooo, I don't think the printer driver is being set there. Further, the models stuff isn't even settable, it seems, for shared printers. And before you suggest I set it on the server, I should tell you my iMac is printing to these printers fine (the printers are on my PowerMac)... its my PowerBook that can't seem to print to them. So, it almost surely has to be something broken on my PowerBook.

Any other ideas?

[kennedy]

Surely one of the many gurus here knows the answers to these shared-printer-driver questions... any help would be GREATLY appreciated...

Originally posted by kennedy:
Desperately seeking a printer driver guru...

1) Where does OS X record what print driver to use with what printer?

2) Same question, but for shared printers?

3) How does OS X decide what print driver to use for a shared printer in the first place?

4) If OS X decides to use one print driver for a shared printer, how do you later tell it to use a different print driver?

5) If #4 isn't possible, can I at least make OS X forget its prior choice of print driver so that I can hopefully make it choose again?

(See the first note in the thread for explanation of why I am asking, in case you care.)