Printing in OS X: Parallel Ports, Drivers, and Mayem

December 30, 2008 - Reading time: 3 minutes

This is a quick tip. In a word, do not buy the USB to Parallel conversion cables. They SOMETIMES work, which is worse than not working, because then you start believing that they might work, but when it comes time to print something serious (like a 100 page document), you will go insane… you’ll print 3 pages, then the print queue will jam, you’ll have to reset it, and it will take 4 or 5 minutes to get the next 3 pages into the queue, then it will jam again, and again and again. It’s nuts. You will have wasted $10 or $20 bucks and you won’t be able to print anything reliably.

Using Parallel Printers with OS X

So how do you use a parallel printer with an OS X computer? Macs haven’t had parallel ports on them for years, but there are still plenty of printers out there that do. Here’s my hot tip: get a dedicated print server and hook this into your network. This works, it works well, AND it’s scalable. If you get another USB printer, this option will cover you. If you have multiple computers in your house that need to share a printer, boom, you’re in luck.

I recommend the TRENDnet TEW-P21G ($110) because I’ve been using it for about 2 years and I haven’t had any problems with it. I simply plugged it into my router, plugged in the printer, and poof… OS X was able to find it. I’m not using the wireless option on this device, but it is there if I ever need it — if you don’t need the wireless option, TRENDnet has cheaper models. It has two USB 2.0 and one Parallel printer port. I’m sure there are other similar products out there, but the point is to let this little “computer” handle the printing instead of trying to make OS X do the difficult (?) job of translating printing to a parallel port. Check out a print server like this if you need to interface with a parallel port printer on OS X. It’s well worth the money.

-- Everett Griffiths