USB Printing problem solved! (Generic solution?)

Networked Epson R2400 Driver Settings

Using Bonjoir to access printers on the OS X side works fine if you don't care about specific driver settings associated with the printer hardware. In my case, I print some photography work using Qimage Pro (not available for Mac). Therefore it appears that I can't access the Epson's driver settings to change print parameters, so the purpose is defeated, unless I reboot entirely into Windows via Boot Camp.

Am I missing something, or are we relegated to the generic printer driver, which does have some basic settings, but completely insufficient for high end photographic printing?

 

We actually can't get Bonjour printing to work at all (outside of Microsoft Word 97), even when using the generic print drivers. See our thread here:
http://forum.parallels.com/thread4322.html

Does anybody have any ideas on how we can get this working?

Thanks,
Scott

 

Printing

Not all of us can get to a printer. I was wondering if some setting in windows might be the problem so I am posting a long winded list of what I have done and the responses I have gotten. Maybe someone reading this will see something to help us all.

I have loaded Windows XP Pro, and am running OSX 10.4.7 on an Intel MAC.

Between two MAC's and a Windows machine the Network is fine and lets me operate from any to any.

If I try to "add a printer" in Parralles Windows (PWin for short) I get Win message with a red X that says "Operation could not be completed."

If I ping out of PWin, I can see and get responses from both a printer attached to my computer and one on the network (a network printer)

When I use the Bonjour Wizard the following screens come up.

First I am offered four choices:
Dell Laser Printer 1700n <network printer>
Dell Laser Printer 1700n@Richard Leonetti's Computer <my iMac>
Dell Laser Printer 1700n@Shannon Leonetti's Computer <networked, MAC>
Stylus Photo 960 @ Richard Leonetti's Computer <USB on my machine>

Next screen, for selecting each of the above (one by one) in the same order:
no description, no location
Generic Postscript, no location
Generic Postscript, no location
Epson SP 960 (1), Richard Leonetti's Computer

Next screen:
For the first three (above)
Name: as above
Mfg: generic
Model: Generic/Postscript
Protocol: LPR
Default: No

For the Epson (above) every thing is the same except:
Name: Stylus Photo 960 @ Richard Leonetti's Computer
Protocol: IPP

On "okay" I get
Printer Window, red X, "The arguments are invalid" followed by (on okay)
Error Window, yellow warning: "You do not have sufficient access to your computer to connect to the selected printer."

Anyone with any ideas?

 

Works great for me. I print to both a HP laserjet 1012 and a HP Photosmart 7960 via Bonjour now.

 

printer still doesn't work

I couldn't get my HP officejet to work from the Windows virtual computer so I downloaded Bonjour for Windows, as suggested in other messages here, but all I get is a "No Bonjour printer found" message, and nothing that mentions a "Generic/Postscript" printer. Thinking that maybe this had to do with the fact that I'd already installed the printer driver on the virtual side I uninstalled it, but that didn't make any difference. Suggestions, please?

 

Now with screen capture movie

On my Macpro I print to two printers from XP on Parallels.

The information on setting this up was hinted at on page 3 of this thread, but I've managed to put together full instructions. I agree, the Bonjour printing just isn't up to the job for photo printing.

You need a recent downloaded Parallels Desktop rather than the boxed CD. I started out using 1896.2 rc2 from Sept 15th and have had recent success with build 1922-rc2 which is a lot faster and has been bug free for me so far. 1940 is no problem either.

The following is for directly attached USB printers... (screen capture movie to show you how it is done with an Epson printer http://dpreview.hotair.fastmail.co.uk/CUPS_IPP_Howto.mov)

(screen capture movie of how to set up a Canon 5200 attached by USB.
http://dpreview.hotair.fastmail.co.u...00%20setup.mov)

Sharing the printer up to the Parallels environment is the tricky bit. What you have to do is set up a shared printer specification on the mac that is a raw pass through of data. This means you can then print using Qimage and the Windows driver.

1.

You go through the process of correctly installing the printer on the mac with the normal drivers. You then have to open up a terminal (Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal) and run the command 'lpinfo -v' - this gives you some information that you need to cut and paste for the next stage. In the output you are looking for a line like:

Code:

direct usb://EPSON/Stylus%20Pro%207800?serial=NE048060509133533- 
       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  This is the bit you will cut and paste later.

1. (ALTERNATIVE METHOD contribution by 'rphoto')

The same information is in System Profile under the Printer section URI field. It is easier to cut and paste from here too.

2.

Now start up the Safari web browser and go to the local CUPS printing interface page : http://127.0.0.1:631 You will have to enter your short username and password.

CUPS is the underlying print engine on OS X, so if you click on the printers page you will see the USB printer that is already setup. You want to use the add printer option,..

2a.
The first page of Name/Location/Description is arbitrary information except that the Name is the unique name for the printer and it is the name you will type in when setting up the network printer on the Windows virtual machine.

2b.
Second page: Set the Device to "USB printer"

2c.
Thrid page: cut and paste the usb://... information from the terminal

2d.
Fourth page: set Make to "Raw"

2e.
Fifth page: set Model to the only available option of "Raw queue"

It should now confirm the printer is setup and you are done with the CUPS interface as the printer definition will show up in the normal Mac preferemces interface.


3.
Bring up the system preferences and the "Print and Fax" page. There is a tab for "Printer sharing". In this tab, make sure that your new printer definition is shared.

4.
I won't go through the instructions for setting up Xp under Parallels, but you can pretty much get it running with default settings. 512 MB memory works fine for Qimage. You set up a Parallels shared drive to allow access to your photos.

4a.
You need to have the printer driver already installed on the virtual machine, so follow the manufacturers instructions for this.

4b.
Under Windows you setup a new network printer (don't browse for the printer... set it up specifically). You need to know the dns name or IP address of your Mac.

The printer address is...

Code:

http://mac_ip_address_or_dns_name:631/printers/printer_name_from_step_2a 

4c.

Select the right driver from the list. Windows will not be able to detect the correct printer driver.


With that little lot you should be done and Windows just becomes your printing environment. Performance is alright and it doesn't slow down the Mac too much. When the print job has spooled, the MAc takes over and you can shut down Windows while it is still printing.

I also have Qimage pointing to a Canon Pixma 5200R shared over the network and it can do this under parallels without any setup on the Mac.

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks for the contructive input. Windows XP via Parallels in unable to find the printer established in your instructions. I am certain I am using the correct IP address. Specifically, the entry is "http://192.168.0.102/R2400." The IP address is found via system profiler. I access the internet via a router. Incidentally, this newly added printer is not recognized under the Mac OS; i.e nothing prints when selecting this as the printer; I recieve an error message. I cannot print a test page. Is that normal?

I attempted the process a couple of times, to ensure I didn't muck something up. Same result

Thoughts?

Again, any insights anyone can shed would be most helpful.

 

I think I see the error...the e-mail message I received left out some critical informatio...

 

I got it to work!! I am indebted to you! I've been living with this problem since I got my Mac Pro. Awesome...Thanks you!

 

I had the same problem trying to get my Epson Stylus Photo 1280 to work with Paralles. Would not work with the Epson Stylus Photo 1280 Driver downloaded and used with Bonjour. Kept getting "Communications Error." Deleted printer and reinstalled using "Generic/Postcript" and my printer came to life.

This problem seems localized to Epson, as my Brother 8840D Multifunction and my HP ColorLaserjet 2840 printers worked with their correct drivers.

 

I'm having some difficulties understanding what this bonjour solution solves.
Does this mean you're getting the windows to print using os x?

I have a windows-only (gdi) printer and need to print via windows for it to work,
is this solution for me as well?

 

Window's Only Print Driver??

I am having the same issues as well. I am using a HP LaserJet 3380 Printer which is installed on my i Mac and is working but I need to use a specific Zan Print driver which of course only works on a PC because of some customization we added. Will I be able to make this work without having the print driver loaded on the Mac side and then networked too??

Any help would be much apreciated..... I am desperate here... we are down and not able to process orders

Thank You,

Trevor
[email protected]

 

You've got some very vague descriptions in there. Zan is a technology for intercepting prints and producing files. If you actually have a printer, surely you want the printer to print?

If your problem is that you want to print to the printer in Windows under Parallels using the Windows printer driver, then follow my instructions. The Mac side of my setup is a passthrough - no Mac printer driver gets in the way of the Windows printer driver printing exactly what you expect.

 

Sorry to be so vauge.

We are using the Zan print driver in conjunction with UPS worldship to grab shipping and packing slip information from our web site.

The ship to information goes to world ship to generate the label which then gets grabed by the Zan driver as an image and sticks it into a word template where the rest of the packing slip information joins before it gets printed out on our HP LaserJet 3380 Printer.

The issue is that the Zan driver is not mac based so I am not sure how to set up the driver to the printer? Is it networked to the USB ports?

Hope that helps

Trevor
[email protected]

 

To paraphrase: The Zan stuff all happens before you attempt to print out a word document to a laser printer...

Why isn't the problem as simple as printing out the final word document to a laser printer?

 

I see what you are saying I think. As long as the Zan driver is loaed on the PC VM then it should be able to be used before it get sent to the printer that is using the HP drivers?

The reason why we don't just print from Word is that we process so many packages every day that if we can cut out one step it can save hours. The customization program that was written for us automates most of the process so that we don't have to go into word and hit print.

Thanks for the help.

Trevor
[email protected]

 

No that is not what i am saying.

Zan is a technology for not printing. It lets applications think they have printed, but there is no printed output. There is a graphics file.

Your customisation uses a Word template and the graphic files of the shipping info to generate the packing info which gets printed on the laserjet... without going anywhere near Zan technology.

Zan is a technology for intercepting printing and doing something else with the output.

If your problem is printing the final result, my instructions will help.

 

Anyone got any advice for me?

I have an OKI 3200 color laser (gdi-only), and there doesn't exist any working mac drivers for this,
does that mean that this bonjour trick wont work for me?

 

There are two "tricks" in this thread.

The Bonjour trick relies on the Mac printer driver.

The CUPS raw printer trick relies on the Windows printer driver being redirected to send its output to a raw passthrough port on the host Mac.

 

Ah I missed that CUPS trick, might it be the one I need?

I can't really figure out how to set up that cups printer - what location and device to use,
and what other settings has to made in mac os x.. printer sharing? windows sharing?

any tips will be greatly appreciated!