Printing over Airport to a USB printer

[Chateauneuf]

Under Mac OS X, is there a way to print over Airport, to an Epson (C80) printer connected to another computer via USB that is on the same network than the Airport Base Station ? The OS 9.x drivers for this printer, have an option called "Epson printer sharing" that lets you do it, but the OS X drivers do not have the option. Any suggestions ???

[griffman]

Sharing of USB printers is not enabled in OS X. I'm not aware of any workarounds at present.

Sorry ... maybe there's something feasible between AppleScript and the UNIX command line, but if so, it's beyond my skill level!

-rob.

[AhrensD]

Can't do it yet until Apple or some enterprising programmer comes up with the software. There was some good discussion on both Macfixit and Macintouch a couple days back about using a Dlink print server to connect an Epson C80 to a network. I can't repeat the directions off the top of my head, but they didn't seem too complicated and would allow any computer on the network, whether Ethernet or wireless, to print to the printer without the necessity of having a host computer with a shared out printer. The discussion said they had success with both OS 9 and OS X. Might be worth your time to go back and take a look. The print server referenced can be purchased for about $65 so this is the cheapest way to truly network a USB printer that I'm aware of in Mac OS X.

[AhrensD]

Here's the link to the Apple discussion thread that explains how to use the dlink print server. I bought one and after fiddling around with it a bit, am up and printing over my Airport wireless network to my Epson 900.

http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?128@64.eLm2aAlglJB^87624@.eff00cf

[Logik]

Even on 9.2.1 I couldn't get Epson printer sharing to work via Airport. :shrugs: