Apple Power Mac G5 dual 2 GHz, SuperDrive, 2.5GB PC3200 RAM
Adaptec 29160 SCSI controller
Gee Three Stealth Serial Port for Power Mac G5
PowerBook G4 17" 1.33GHz, SuperDrive, 1GB RAM
PowerBook G4 15" 667MHz, SuperDrive, 768MB RAM
Mac OS X Printing
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
Printer drivers - for Epson printers, make sure to use the Macintosh OS
X 10.5 Leopard compatibility page - Macintosh Leopard Support - http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/support/SupportLeopard.jsp
- Many drivers are already on the release DVD. If you overwrite
them with a download, an incompatible printer driver may not function
fully or correctly.
Epson Stylus Photo R800/R1800
Pros: Beautiful prints, quality
paper and ink from Epson, borderless printing up to 8x10, printing on
printable CD/DVDs.
Cons: Expensive ink, no borderless printing for
8.5x11
I've had the R800 for over three years and have spent a few thousand
dollars in consumables. Upgrading my Macs to Mac OS 10.5 Leopard
prompted this review. Hopefully some notes here may help others.
Prior to Leopard, getting color balance was quite a chore, resulting in
trial and error to set up profiles for quick prints from iPhoto versus
output from Photoshop, plus playing around with offsets to get centered
prints for 8.5x11. One hint for centering prints was to create actions
in photo shop to scale to the exact output size, bypassing the driver
scaling and centering.
With Leopard, the drivers seem to have changed. After some problems,
I've had success with the latest drivers downloaded from Epson. Follow
their troubleshooting tips to reset the printing subsystem, then reset
the "Print CD" utility by (re)starting it, and then connect and set up
the printer using the Epson-supplied driver. I no longer have separate
profiles for iPhoto versus Photoshop. To print to CD/DVD, make sure to
select A4 or A4 manual feed, as there is no longer any hint for CD/DVD
page setup.
I had a problem where the printer would not power on (after I had a
problem printing a CD, I powered off and extracted the tray and lowered
the bed, then the printer would not power on). A hint from the web
helped - unplug the power cord and leave the printer off overnight. In
the morning, the printer powered on and recovered.
For prints mounted against glass, glossy finish paper sticks to the
glass and gives a mottled look. Semi-gloss paper or luster paper
eliminates this problem for me.
I like 8.5x11 for inexpensive bulk paper stock and frames. But the R800
can't print 8.5x11 borderless, thus the 9 out of 10 rating. So with the
R800, I often print with a wide ~1 inch border for a quick and dirty
matted look, it also has the added benefit that the aspect ratio is
pushed back toward 3:2, ex., print 6x9 landscape with a title at the
bottom in the 8.5x11 space.
About a year ago, I finally bought a refurbished R1800 for $349 from
Epson, now I can print borderless up to 13x19. I still us both
printers, split between work and home.
Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, 10.2 Jaguar
I had problems with the HP Laserjet 1100 and the drivers that
come with
Mac OS X, either 10.2 Jaguar or 10.3 Panther. A quick web search
pointed me in the right direction. To get the printer to work, I
visited the Linux Printing web site which includes printer drivers for
Mac OS X, and installed
ESP Ghostscript and the recommended hpijs driver, then used the Printer
Setup
Utility to configure the Printer Model as HP LaserJet 1100, Foomatic +
hpijs. Linux Printing - http://www.linuxprinting.org/
Mac OS X -
http://www.linuxprinting.org/macosx/
hpijs -
http://www.linuxprinting.org/macosx/hpijs/
download and install espgs-*.ppc.dmg and
hpijs-*-.ppc.dmg
Printer Setup Utility
Add ... Printer Model
HP LaserJet
1100, Foomatic + hpijs
MIDI
New Macs do not have legacy serial ports, so you have to buy a new MIDI
interface that connects either through USB or Firewire (1394).
Using a serial port PCI card or an USB-to-serial-port adapter to
connect to your old MIDI interface probably won't work due to lack of
driver
support in Mac OS X.
This tiny serail port card gains compatibility by installation in place
of
the modem card. Gee Three has a Stealth MIDI plug-in for Mac OS X
available
for download from their site.
NoBell Home - gjm - last update 12/28/2008, created 3/7/2004
