This piece was originally published in my journal/weblog on Monday, 11 August 2003.

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Printing from a Mac OS X (or Mac OS 9) computer to a printer hooked up to a Windows 98 machine

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I wanted to print from my Mac, in the office downstairs, to our laser printer, which is hooked up to a Windows 98 computer in the den upstairs. Windows NT, XP, and 2000 include "print services for Unix" that provide a Unix-standard LPD daemon, to which Mac OS X and other Unix-derived systems can print. But Windows 98 doesn't.

Fortunately, a fine gentleman named Gernot Zander has written lpd.zip, a small, free LPD service called LPD-Win that works in Windows 95, 98, and Me. So here's what you do:

Windows setup

Start at your Windows computer.

Download lpd.zip to your Windows machine from Zander's site, and unzip the archive.
Put the unzipped folder somewhere useful (such as c:\Program Files\lpd).
Run the LPD Administrator program by double-clicking lpdadm.exe in that folder.
Click the Put LPD-Win Into Registry button to have LPD run whenever you boot up your Windows machine.
Click the Run LPD-Win button to start the program this time around and set it up. (You could also double-click lpd.exe in the folder to do the same thing.)
In LPD-Win, set up a new printer by choosing File > Add Printer.
Give the printer a useful name in the LPD Printer Name field (something like WinPrinter or LaserJet or whatever).
Check the Print Raw Directly to Win Printer checkbox, then choose your printer from the pop-up list right underneath.
Choose the same printer from the pop-up list under Windows at the bottom. Click OK.
Your printer should now appear in LPD-Win's Printers list. (There are other sample printers in there, which you can remove if you like by clicking each and choosing File > Remove Printer.)
Restart the Windows computer. (Not strictly necessary, but good to make sure that LPD-Win loads at startup time.)
If you don't know your Windows machine's IP (Internet Protocol) address, wait for the machine to start up and then run WinIPConfig as follows: choose Start > Run and type winipcfg, then click OK—your IP address is a string of four numbers in the IP Configuration dialog box that appears, something like 192.168.1.101. Write that down and close the window.

Mac setup

Now move to your Mac. (Bring the piece of paper with the IP address along.)

Open the Print Center utility in Mac OS X (it's in /Applications/Utilities/Print Center)
Click the Add button or choose Printers > Add Printer...
Choose IP Printing from the pop-up list at the top of the dialog box.
Enter your Windows machine's IP address (from that piece of paper) into the Printer's Address field.
Clear the Use Default Queue on Server checkbox so that it is not checked.
In the Queue Name field, type the printer name you assigned in Windows (WinPrinter, for instance). This may not be necessary, but it helps keep things straight.
Choose your printer brand and model from the Printer Model pop-up list. If you can't find your particular printer, try Generic.
Click the Add button.

Your Windows printer should now appear as something like WinPrinter on 192.168.1.101 in your printer list in the Print Center. It should also be available anytime you choose File > Print from any Mac OS X application (even in Classic mode). Try it!

Incidentally, Mac OS 9 and other versions of the classic Mac OS should also be able print through your Windows machine with LPR/LPD once you've set it up, but I haven't been able to get it to work over my wireless network so far.

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Page BBEdited on 20-Mar-04 (originally published on 12-Aug-03)