8 Nov
2001
8 Nov
'01
7:20 p.m.
What confused me for a long time, and is currently
scheduled for again this
evening, is that Apple printers in many cases are NOT TCP/IP, but ethertalk
(same physical layer, different protocol). Some of the bridges and routers
pass TCP/IP or EtherTalk, but not both, then add to that the native network
blind character of a Wintel box and I am walking in a foggy forest.
Tonights fun, Apple Laserwriter 16/600 vs W98se, film at 11.
I've been digging at this problem for a few weeks, and I almost don't
believe the answer. Windows machines apparently won't print directly to
network printers. (obviously NT will, ditto maybe w2k, but not 95 or 98).
The story I hear is that Microsoft wanted to sell more NT servers, so they
pulled the support for standard protocols like LPR (something like that)
forcing users to print from a workstation to a NT server, which contains
the protocols to talk to the network printers directly. Why did windows
users allow MicroSoft to get away with crap like that?
BTW the sane alternative appears to be SAMBA, but it still is really wrong.
HP has wizard software that gets around this somehow, but Apple can't even
remember it was in the printer business 4 years ago.