Scenario

There's an NT workstation, a Hewlett Packard 5 laser printer with a JetDirect network card (it does NOT have Postscript), and an Apple Macintosh, all connected to the same network.

Problem

How can you print from the Macintosh to the HP printer?

Solutions

1. Spend $400+ to buy the Postscript SIMM from HP.

2. Spend $100 on PowerPrint and move your computer closer to the printer.

3. Keep reading to do see how to do it for free.

Elaboration

Solution number 3 utilizes freely-available software to allow printing. What makes this different from PowerPrint is that it runs on the network, not through a serial-to parallel converter cable. This also makes it much less expensive if you work in an office and already have the printer, the NT machine, and the Mac. It's a roundabout way of doing things, but it works.

Here's how it happens: Ghostscript, running on the NT workstation, receives and rasterizes Postscript data from the Macintosh, rasterizes it, and then sends the rasterized output to the PC printer (in this example an HP 5 with a JetDirect network card). Ghostscript allows the NT machine to essentially act as a raster image processor (RIP). So, how do you get the data from the Mac to the PC to be rasterized? Using Apple's Laserwriter 8.5 software, any Mac has access to the Line Printer protocol (LPR). To get the NT machine to receive the data from the LPR client (the Mac), you have to activate the Line Printer Daemon (LPD) that is built into NT. As a side note, this setup also allows Unix machines to print to non-Postscript printers as though they were Postscript. However, there is a problem with the way some LPR clients and the NT machine interact, as documented by Microsoft in these documents, 168457 and 150930. So, if you’re still getting pages of page descriptions instead of what you printed, change the registry setting on the NT machine as documented by that Redmond company. (Side note: I had to change the settings per the 150930 document as the changes spelled out in the other didn’t work, despite the fact that the machine was running NT 4.0 with service pack 3)

To recap:

When the LPD gets the file from the Mac LPR client (Laserwriter 8.5), it sends it to a redirected port (courtesy free software called RedMon), which calls Ghostscript. Ghostscript rasterizes the data and spits it out to a real network port, where it prints on the PC printer.

Want more detailed instructions?

The Software

The first part of the equation, Ghostscript, is a free Postscript interpreter. Ideally someone will figure out a way to use Ghostscript on the Mac to do the rasterization and then use an LPR client to send the data directly to the HP, thus bypassing the NT machine altogether.

RedMon is also free software and is essentially the scripting method that automates the process of rasterizing the data on the peecee.

Laserwriter 8.5 software is free for the download.

When you consider that a Postscript SIMM for an HP 5 costs like $400, this setup is a bargain. However, it is not industrial strength. Other than that, it's one more tool for keeping that Mac in your office.

References

Laserwriter 8.5 software
http://swupdates.info.apple.com/

Ghostscript Home Page
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/

RedMon Page
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/redmon/