[386] in Resnet-Forum
Re: Network printing from PC's???
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Joel P. Cooper)
Wed Oct 19 09:36:38 1994
Date: Wed, 19 Oct 1994 08:14:30 -0500
To: resnet-forum@MIT.EDU
From: joel.p.cooper.1@nd.edu (Joel P. Cooper)
At 4:04 PM 10/18/94 -0700, Dane Spearing wrote:
>We're having a little printing problem here at Stanford:
>
>Stanford is (was) predominantly a Macintosh-based campus, and
>most of our network services are based around that platform,
>including printing. A number of students are now coming in with
>their own PC machines and want to be able to print to our public
>printers. Unfortunately, the majority of our public printer are
>AppleTalk-based. Is there any way for a PC (running, say, Windows)
>to print to an AppleTalk printer over the network?
>(Most of the network at Stanford is ethernet -- a mix of 10baseT
>and ThinNet. So hooking up to the media isn't a problem. How
>do we get the PC's to see/print to the AppleTalk printers.)
>
>
>The more general question is:
>
>How do PC's in general print to network printers? (i.e. - printers
>that are not directly attached to the computer). We have little
>experience with PC printing.
You may want to have the PCs use something that supports lpr: PC-NFS,
Chameleon, things like that. You run Enscript and CAP on a UNIX print
spooler, PCs can send either text or Postscript to the print spooler, it
detects the type of job it has been sent and filters appropriately, then
sends to print job to the LaserWriter via CAP. We have had the UNIX side
of this in place for years and have the PC part running in prototype (the
PCs, currently running PC-NFS, also get to play in AFS filespace and all
print jobs are associated w/ AFS ID so you can do neat things like
accounting if you need to).
If I ran the zoo, I would also avoid supporting PCL at all costs. Keep it
PostScript.
Regards,
Joel
---
Joel P. Cooper Phone: 219-631-7221
Asst. Director, Enterprise Computing Services Fax: 219-631-9283
Office of University Computing Email: joel.p.cooper.1@nd.edu
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556
"The web of life connects each of us to the other,
so it's no use pretending that you alone run the show..." - TR/Utopia, 1977
