Printing in OS X
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Our Day Has Come |
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Continuing with my saga of hooking up a DesignJet 250C... After setting the printer up as already described, I fired up PowerCADD 6, drew some stuff and selected Print, then chose the printer and by golly I have all these controls for 300x300 or 600x600 dpi, monochrome or color, color saturation, etc. I then clicked "Print" and in a flash, PowerCADD was finished printing, and then the Print Center handled the printing in the background. The printing output is better than anything I've ever seen out of this old printer. The text looks exactly like it should, and you have round pens for lines and beziers, etc. What really surprised me was the speed of rendering and printing. In the past, using PowerPlot, it's always been an agonizingly slow process, but PowerCADD is done in a flash, and then the printer marches through the drawing at a very snappy pace. Maybe it has something to do with the new DesignJet box. Fantasmo! Alfred Scott |
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I have the HP 750c and have worked extensively w/ GIMP print and the Ghostscript emulator that enables PostScript. It works as you would hope. I regularly print dxf/dwg files from Illustrator 10 and Vectorworks 10, and they are flawless. The only hassle I've found is that I have an early JetDirect board, and it doesn't "broadcast" its name. I have it set for DHCP and have to print the config sheet, log the I/P address and then set up GIMP print for I/P printing. I leave the plotter on and have only have had to redo it once in the last six months. I expect that PowerCADD will work flawlessly since it is using PDF/Quartz as its display model. I'm sure that those guys are experimenting w/ GIMP to make sure there aren't any problems. I was on the verge of shelling out money for Rip-X and then found out about GIMP print. I couldn't believe it was free and was further surprised that it works flawlessly. In fact, I have dumped everything and use GIMP for all of the printers in my office: Epson Stylus 3000, Epson C80; Epson 740; LW 16/600; LW 8500 that way I have one unified driver to train employees on. I get better results on the C80 w/ GIMP than I do w/ Epson's own driver...go figure... Scott |
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Another Printer Success Story HP DesignJet 750c printer with HP JetDirect 400N internal printer server. Gimp-print and Ghostprint for drivers. Info in Bullpen was invaluable to determine the values for all the addresses. Downloaded the Installation Guide from HP for the print server and reset all the values from the printer front panel using their directions... very tedious but "do-able", as has been previously describe by others. I want to get Pcadd siX installed now and try printing a drawing, but I'll put a detailed description together to post on the Bullpen later in case anyone with this configuration is interested. By the way, I bought the printer server card used on eBay for cheap. $40 plus shipping. The version of the 400N I got was the J4100A. The J4106A may also work, but there is some conflicting information on the HP support pages. More on this later as well. Rolando |
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My friend Bob Snow (long time PowerCADD user - he showed me PowerDraw in 1993 before I started my office) has been trying to set up his DesignJet 230 with Gimp and has been having no luck - he could not determine the IP address, and I think he has one of the old beige jet direct boxes. Anyway he decided to follow the directions on the Gimp website for setting it up under AppleTalk, and he was successful. It is a bit more cryptic than using an IP address, but if somebody has an older JetDirect box and wants to try it, well why not. Bob sent me instructions, so I am forwarding them to you, oh keeper of the Gimp-Knowledge! Gregory La Vardera GimpPrint with AppleTalk How can I print using AppleTalk? To set up Appletalk (PAP) printing you first need to open the terminal and type "atlookup" at the command line. After a delay you should get a (possibly long) list of appletalk devices on your network. You want to find the entry for your printer and use that info to form a PAP URI that you will enter in Print Center when you set up the printer. When you type "atlookup" it should look something like this: macosx% atlookup For this example, here is the corresponding pap URI that you would enter in "Device URI" for device (pap) using the Print Center "Advanced" setup: pap://*/Stylus%20PHOTO%20EX/EPSONLQ2 Note that the colon is replaced with a forward slash and any spaces in any names must be replaced with "%20" in the URI. Here it is more generically: pap://zone/Appletalk_Device_Name/protocol Hold down the option key when selecting Add in the print center. device URI is the following for my HP - pap://*/DesignJet_A21BBB/DesignJet%20230%20(C4695) Printer model is Design Jet 230 Bob Snow |
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I finally got the HP488CA to work here. I had been putting it off for a fear of blocking the users on OS9 from printing, by changing the DHCP in the JetDirect. So, for my OSX machine, I left the server type as DHCP for the time being and it works. If we have a power outage, which is very common in this part of the Island, I worry that the DHCP will assign a new IP. My question is this: Is there a freeware / shareware app that you know of that will allow me to access the JetDirect and get its attribute, especially the IP. This will allow me to get the need information quickly, without having to wait for the JetDirect to print out all of its info in 10 different languages and waste a lot of paper. Jason Locher I don't know of anything to help with this. -- Alfred |
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I have been using Gimp now for a few months and I am learning the ins and outs as I go. I wondered if anybody else has any experiences to share. Here are some things I notice: · Rich black and greys - Powerplot mixed inks to make different colors but black and grey was black ink only. I notice that Gimp makes a Rich black using all four color inks much as my Epson desktop does. It looks nicer. · Slow Ripping - I think Gimp and Ghost really slow down when ripping in the background, especially if you are trying to do something like draw in the active window. · Redundant ripping - If I print 3 copies of the same drawing, Gimp seems to rip the drawing 3 times - It won't start printing the first one till its done. This is a big time waster but I don't know how to get around it. You can't rip a file and download it to the printer as we used to do with Powerplot. Anybody have a solution for this? Gregory La Vardera
Stupid question. Does it make any difference if "Collated" is checked or not? My printer dialog box defaults to collated and I find that it takes less time if unchecked. May not be as large a time as you are experiencing but thought I'd ask. Ron Gillespie I have tried it checked and unchecked, and it still rips the same page multiple times - I still uncheck it when ever I print though. Gregory |
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After much gnashing of teeth, I have actually been able to print a PowerCADD 6 "D" size sheet in OS X to a HP Designjet 500PS. As most of you know, HP is either to busy to create an OS X driver or just doesn't give a ____. Well it seems that someone else has written a driver that works with the 500PS. And all it costs is a lunch. More on that later. The particulars: TiPB 500 mhz All on a network. · I downloaded and installed Gimp-Print 4.2.5 - both can be found @ http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/MacOSX.php3 After much surfing w/Google I found a driver · I downloaded and installed a DesignJet 500 driver for Mac OS X Jaguar @ http://www.buymelunch.com/printing/ I opened print center and selected add a printer. I choose IP printing and entered the IP address of my HP DesignJet 500PS (I have a 610n Jet Direct card installed). I choose HP for the driver and from the list I selected "DesignJet 500PS (42 inch), Tyler B + buymelunch.org" I then made a PDF file from the PC6 "D" size sheet. I opened the PDF file in Acrobat Reader, selected the proper page setup and hit print. Viola! It worked. Not only that, but it completed the print faster than the HP rip did under OS 9. I have only tried one "D" size print so far, but will put it through its paces over the next week or two. I have not printed directly from PC6 yet as I have had some orientation problems printing to my laser printer. For those of you frustrated w/HP and looking for a solution, try the above. Tyler Blessing wrote the 500PS driver. That's where the "lunch" comes in. I would suggest you try his driver and if it works, buy Tyler lunch. It will become clear after you visit his website. Gary Tilson Gary, I had no problem printing to my friends 500ps using GimpPrint and IP printing. I simply choose the 488 driver in the printer list, and it worked just fine. Here was the account I posted over at Architosh: A few weeks ago I was at my friends office helping him prepare for a presentation. I was preparing a 3d view of a site on my PowerBook. My friends office is strictly AutoCAD and PCs. He has a small network with a DJ500ps. When it came time to plot I plugged into his network, I opened up the print center and went to add a printer, I choose IP printing, went to the DJ500 and found the small reference book in the side pocket, found the location of the IP address in the menu structure, plugged it into the printer setup, I chose the HP DJ488 as the printer description and added the plotter to the list. It printed perfectly. Greg Lavardera I saw your write up earlier, and I tried using the HP DJ488 without success. I don't know what, if anything, I did different, but no cigar. The new driver I downloaded make all the difference. Gary Tilson |
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More info on Gimp, OSX and JetDirect 500x print server. 1. I have been able to get both of our connected printers to successfully print from OSX. Printer #1 Hp designjet 600 24" w gray scale; CUPS + GIMP 4.2.5 and the DJ700 driver. Printer #2 Hp deskjet 1220c 11 x 17 color; CUPS + GIMP 4.2.5 and the DJ1220c driver. 2. I am not able to get the coordination of both printers and the print server to work. When both printers are connected to the print server only the printer connected to port #1 will output data. 3. Question about multi-port print server setup. FOLLOWING IS MY SETUP...... as shown on the Get INFO/ window Fixed IP number for address. this matches our in studio fixed ip number network Printer Name: entasisPLOT Queue name: port_1_xxx_xxx_xxx_xx Printer Name: entasisCOLOURs Queue name: port_2_xxx_xxx_xxx_xx Robert Wease |
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I have an old DesignJet 220. I have been searching the web for possible solutions to get it to work with OS X, but no success. That is until Panther! :-) As you have read, GIMP printing is built in. I have my DesignJet connected to a small office network via Ethernet. About a year or so ago I finally purchased the graphic pak from Microspot to work over my network. When Jaguar came out I really wanted the plotter to live on. No dice. The only seemingly solution was to spend more money on yet anothet driver. Well, I searched, and read and searched some more. Nothing seemed to work. GIMP did not even support it. Persistance paid off, or was that just being too tight. Nonetheless, when I purchased Panther I tried to connect using the built-in GIMP dirvers. Note however that my DesignJet 220 is not listed. SO I tired the next best thing. I selected the DesignJet 230. IT WORKED! There are a few hiccups, like with the direction of the page when plotting, and the preview feature in Panther does not truly indicate what will print, but it does print. So now I am up and plotting in Panther using my old faithful dinosaur. Kevin Motyka |
