HP Deskwriter 680c w. Mac OS 10.5

I have an old HP Deskwriter 680c that can produce banners with HP banner
paper. I want to use it via a Keystone USB-to-"old Mac"-adapter to
connect my G5 to the Deskwriter. The documentation for the downloadable
HP printer driver for this printer explicitly states that this driver is
for Mac OS 9. GimpPrint does not have any driver for this printer. Does
anyone know of a OS 10 printer driver for this printer? Thanks.

On Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:06:49 -0400, Mel Comisarow wrote
(in article <melcom->):

> I have an old HP Deskwriter 680c that can produce banners with HP banner
> paper. I want to use it via a Keystone USB-to-"old Mac"-adapter to
> connect my G5 to the Deskwriter. The documentation for the downloadable
> HP printer driver for this printer explicitly states that this driver is
> for Mac OS 9. GimpPrint does not have any driver for this printer. Does
> anyone know of a OS 10 printer driver for this printer? Thanks.

It's Dead Jim. That printer was supported under OS 8 and OS 9. It was
abandoned with OS X. It's been dead for a decade. It's gone. History. It's an
ex-printer unless you have a machine running OS 9. It almost certainly ain't
even gonna run under Classic in a version of OS X that has Classic. As OS X
10.5 doesn't have Classic, no current system can use it. Congratulations, you
have a large paperweight.

--
email to oshea dot j dot j at gmail dot com.

In article <>,
J.J. O'Shea <> wrote:

> It's Dead Jim. That printer was supported under OS 8 and OS 9. It was
> abandoned with OS X. It's been dead for a decade. It's gone. History. It's an
> ex-printer unless you have a machine running OS 9. It almost certainly ain't
> even gonna run under Classic in a version of OS X that has Classic. As OS X
> 10.5 doesn't have Classic, no current system can use it. Congratulations, you
> have a large paperweight.

Star Trek and Monty Python at the same time. Bravo!

leo

Mel Comisarow wrote:
> I have an old HP Deskwriter 680c that can produce banners with HP banner
> paper. I want to use it via a Keystone USB-to-"old Mac"-adapter to
> connect my G5 to the Deskwriter. The documentation for the downloadable
> HP printer driver for this printer explicitly states that this driver is
> for Mac OS 9. GimpPrint does not have any driver for this printer. Does
> anyone know of a OS 10 printer driver for this printer? Thanks.

You might be able to get it to print with CUPS and the footmatic drivers.
It depends upon what PDL (print definition language) it supports.
PCL is easy, the later Windows only printers (now supported with the HPIJS
driver on almost everything) are a little more difficult.

If you really want to print on it, the best thing to do would IMHO,buy a cheap
PC (anthything with 512m RAM and a 20g hard disk would do), put the printer
on it, and run UNBUNTU linux. You will have to play around a little to
get CUPS to support the printer and a parallel port, but it can be done
and there are plenty of people out there willing to help you get it working.

Then you connect the PC to the G5 via ethernet, set up CUPS on your Mac
(an add-on for Tiger, built into Leopard) and print away.

Geoff.
--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM

In article <>,
"Geoffrey S. Mendelson" <> wrote:

> Mel Comisarow wrote:
> > I have an old HP Deskwriter 680c that can produce banners with HP banner
> > paper. I want to use it via a Keystone USB-to-"old Mac"-adapter to
> > connect my G5 to the Deskwriter. The documentation for the downloadable
> > HP printer driver for this printer explicitly states that this driver is
> > for Mac OS 9. GimpPrint does not have any driver for this printer. Does
> > anyone know of a OS 10 printer driver for this printer? Thanks.
>
> You might be able to get it to print with CUPS and the footmatic drivers.
> It depends upon what PDL (print definition language) it supports.
> PCL is easy, the later Windows only printers (now supported with the HPIJS
> driver on almost everything) are a little more difficult.
>
> If you really want to print on it, the best thing to do would IMHO,buy a cheap
> PC (anthything with 512m RAM and a 20g hard disk would do), put the printer
> on it, and run UNBUNTU linux. You will have to play around a little to
> get CUPS to support the printer and a parallel port, but it can be done
> and there are plenty of people out there willing to help you get it working.
>
> Then you connect the PC to the G5 via ethernet, set up CUPS on your Mac
> (an add-on for Tiger, built into Leopard) and print away.
>
> Geoff.

Or you could just donate the printer to some non-profit or recycle it.
Then buy a printer that "just works" from the Apple site.

--
DeeDee, don't press that button! DeeDee! NO! Dee...
[I filter all Goggle Groups posts, so any reply may be automatically by ignored]

On Tue, 21 Jul 2009 03:54:04 -0400, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote
(in article <>):

> Mel Comisarow wrote:
>> I have an old HP Deskwriter 680c that can produce banners with HP banner
>> paper. I want to use it via a Keystone USB-to-"old Mac"-adapter to
>> connect my G5 to the Deskwriter. The documentation for the downloadable
>> HP printer driver for this printer explicitly states that this driver is
>> for Mac OS 9. GimpPrint does not have any driver for this printer. Does
>> anyone know of a OS 10 printer driver for this printer? Thanks.
>
> You might be able to get it to print with CUPS and the footmatic drivers.
> It depends upon what PDL (print definition language) it supports.
> PCL is easy, the later Windows only printers (now supported with the HPIJS
> driver on almost everything) are a little more difficult.
>
> If you really want to print on it, the best thing to do would IMHO,buy a
cheap
> PC (anthything with 512m RAM and a 20g hard disk would do), put the printer
> on it, and run UNBUNTU linux. You will have to play around a little to
> get CUPS to support the printer and a parallel port, but it can be done
> and there are plenty of people out there willing to help you get it working.

That is NOT going to work. That's a _DeskWriter_, which is an old
_Mac-specific_ printer, which has _a serial port_, and a mini-DIN-8 serial
port at that, instead of the parallel port usually fitted to printers of that
era. (At least all the other DeskWriters I ever saw only had serial ports. I
can't remember the exact configuration of the 680c, it's been a while, but
there's no reason why it should have had a parallel port...) It didn't have
USB ports. WinBoxes don't usually look for printers on serial ports. Finding
a method to connect between the DB9 serial port on a WinBox and the
mini-DIN-8 port on that printer is likely to be... interesting. At one time
there were adaptors available, but they were mostly for dial-up modems. The
last computer of any type which had mini-DIN-8 serial ports would have been a
beige G3, like the one I have sitting over in the corner. There were
USB-to-mini-DIN-8 adaptors, but the drivers for them were OS 8 and OS 9
specific... they won't work in OS X, and they _definitely_ won't work in any
variety of Windows 'cause they were Mac-specific! There were _different_
USB-to-parallel adaptors which _would_ work on Windows machines of the time,
but as they have _parallel_ connections they won't work on that printer
'cause it doesn't have a parallel port!

Sorry, man, but that thing's a paperweight.

>
> Then you connect the PC to the G5 via ethernet, set up CUPS on your Mac
> (an add-on for Tiger, built into Leopard) and print away.
>
> Geoff.
>



--
email to oshea dot j dot j at gmail dot com.