Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Andrew Stephens · Feb 12, 2008, 01:02 PM

OK I'm gonna bung this in here because it's not a problem per se and I sure as hell wish they'd make OS X more savvy in this respect.

When in the office I'm normally hooked up to the ethernet network which has both my laser printers on it. So far so good, but often I rush in, need to print a document and rush out again so my airport picks up the network.

At which point the printer que pipes up with the fact that I can't print because Appletalk is active on the ethernet port not the Appletalk one.

How hard can it be to set Appletalk to active and have it switch to what ever port is printing?

Everytime I'm in a rush I have to open system prefs, select wireless, click Appletalk on, be reminded that it can only be active on one port at a time "yes I know!!"

ALways frustrating because it's only an issue when I'm in a rush.

I'm going to be better off sitting down and configuring the printers etc to print via tcp/ip aren't I.

Art Vandelay · Feb 12, 2008, 01:14 PM

Originally Posted by Andrew Stephens

I'm going to be better off sitting down and configuring the printers etc to print via tcp/ip aren't I.

Yes. AppleTalk is deprecated and will likely be removed from OS X altogether in some future upgrade.

CharlesS · Feb 12, 2008, 02:17 PM

Yep, it's finally time to retire that LaserWriter IIg.

peeb · Feb 12, 2008, 02:19 PM

I have the same issue - I have no idea how to do this though - my printers were pretty much automatically detected - how do I switch off appletalk and move to tcp/ip?

Andrew Stephens · Feb 12, 2008, 03:15 PM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

Yep, it's finally time to retire that LaserWriter IIg.

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

goMac · Feb 12, 2008, 03:20 PM

Originally Posted by Andrew Stephens

How hard can it be to set Appletalk to active and have it switch to what ever port is printing?

This is hardly just an OS X issue. AppleTalk has always had this problem, even back in OS 9/8/7.

Andrew Stephens · Feb 12, 2008, 03:20 PM

Originally Posted by peeb

I have the same issue - I have no idea how to do this though - my printers were pretty much automatically detected - how do I switch off appletalk and move to tcp/ip?

It's not hard. Each printer has it's own ip address. Click on printer setup in sysprefs and select ip instead of Appletalk.

Enter the printers ip address and select a printing protocol (default should do).

Then select the driver just as you would for Appletalk.

After that it's just like Appletalk. (It's not that I don't know how to do it it's just that I've never bothered until now but I guess it's tiem to switch.)

Art Vandelay · Feb 12, 2008, 03:21 PM

Or if they're less than a few years old, just use Bonjour (mDNS). Then it will almost be exactly like setting up an AppleTalk printer.

peeb · Feb 12, 2008, 03:21 PM

Thanks!

olePigeon · Feb 12, 2008, 03:58 PM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

Yep, it's finally time to retire that LaserWriter IIg.

Or you can buy an AppleTalk -> Ethernet bridge.

CharlesS · Feb 12, 2008, 04:05 PM

I thought those just bridge the LocalTalk connector to the Ethernet network, so you can get the hardware connected. AFAIK, the computer still needs to be able to talk AppleTalk to the printer.

I was being facetious, though - TCP/IP is definitely the way to go for printers in this day and age.

Andrew Stephens · Feb 12, 2008, 04:24 PM

Hey yeah! LocalTalk. Why is there no LocalTalk support in OSX. I might need to unretire my old A3 colour printer. It had four coloured films on long roll and fed the paper in and out four times. It also took a week to print a page!

Happy days.