Path: utzoo!utgpu!cunews!bnrgate!brtph3!brchh104!brchs1!bnr.ca!rice.edu!sun-spots-request
From: holdenm@stolaf.edu (Mark Holden)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: Re: Sharing a printer with Macs
Keywords: Software
Message-ID: <932@brchh104.bnr.ca>
Date: 30 Dec 90 01:04:00 GMT
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X-Original-Date: Mon, 24 Dec 90 06:54:37 GMT
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>From: seila!dksfr!don@mahendo.jpl.nasa.gov
>How can we share this printer between the Macs and Unix machines?  That
>is, we want to be able to print normally from within Mac applications, and
>also print ascii or postscript files from the Suns via the lpr/lpd system.
>Ideally, the solution would not require us to have the Macs connected to
>BOTH an appletalk and an ethernet LAN.

Mt. Xinu has a line of appletalk products for UNIX boxes, in
particular,K-talk, K-Spool, and A-Share.  We're running K-Spool to share
Postscript printers between our Suns and Macs (and PC's too, but we try to
ignore them)  It allows the Unix side to use any appletalk LaserWriter as
a printer, allows the Macs to use any serial PostScript printer via the
Suns, and provides some nice spooling for the Macs regardless of whether
the printer is on appletalk or serial.  We've been running K-Spool on a
SLC for ~3 months, and after initial set-up its worked beautifully.  There
was a problem in the initial set-up caused by a problem in Sun's cc that
required an updated object file from Mt. Xinu, but I would expect that
this has been fixed in newer releases.  Mt. Xinu was very helpful, and
thanks to the internet, software fixes were in and in place in < 1 hour!
Price is ~$700 ($695 *I think*)

And and always: I am not connected with Mt. Xinu in any way, I'm just a
satisfied customer who can now access oodles of printers from any machine
on the network.

As an addition matter, I believe with a little bit of hacking (minimal)
and NEWSPrint, one could get this stuff to print to almost *any* printer
(assuming NeWSprint support for the printer)