Introductory Notes

Purpose

The basic purpose of Balthisar’s Guide is to assist you in getting your network printers up-and-running from Macintosh OS X.

This document was originally prepared with the following in mind:

  • A networked Hewlett-Packard (“HP”) DeskJet 970cse printer.
  • Mac OS X version 10.1.
  • The complete inability to produce any meaningful output to the above-mentioned network printer.

However, with the popularity of this document and its application to a large variety of printers and print servers, this document is no longer dedicated specifically to the equipment nor purpose stated above. Hence, you may find Balthisar’s Guide completely useful if any of the following apply to your situation:

  • Your network printer – TCP/IP, or AppleTalk, or SMB (Windows-network) – is not at all supported by Mac OS X.
  • Your printer is supported by Mac OS X, but only locally connected (i.e., not over a network).
  • Your printer isn’t supported period by Mac OS X.
  • You’re not happy with the support of your printer driver in Mac OS X.
  • You want to print to a printer shared by a Windows computer.
  • You have a Postscript Level 1 printer you still would like to use with Mac OS X.
  • …and any number of other situations not mentioned above. I recommend you read through this document and see if there’s anything at all that can help you out.

When you get to the Pick and Choose a Scenario section of the Guide, you ought to be able to determine precisely whether the Balthisar’s Guide will help you, and the sequence of steps to take to be helped.