Snow Leopard doesn’t include AppleTalk

“Mac OS X Snow Leopard Family Pack (5-User)” (Apple)

I successfully installed Snow Leopard on all the Macs in our office¹ with no real problems to report. Well, one minor issue with an older HP LaserJet printer.

Snow Leopard has dropped support for the networking protocols collectively called AppleTalk. Since I am not a developer, I had not heard of AppleTalk being left behind. I don’t blame Apple, AppleTalk was first introduced in 1984, and it probably wasn’t a trivial task to include it in new OS releases. I wish the news had been more publicly discussed – I was a bit blind-sided by it.

However, although we have three networked printers in our office,²³ the one I use the most is the HP Laserjet 4000, probably because it is closest to me. That, and it is an awesome workhorse, having printed hundreds of thousands of pages over the 12 years or so we’ve had it, with barely a peep of trouble.

I hate disposing of working machinery; since the printer worked this morning, I wanted it to work this afternoon too. Turned out, there is a printing protocol called HP Jetdirect – Socket, and it was supposed to work with this printer. I printed the Configuration Page – input the IP address listed as the JetSend address in the appropriate spot, but the computer still could not connect successfully. Looking a little deeper, I figured out that⁴ the printer was on a different subnet mask than the rest of our network. I’ve used and supported computers for a long time, but to be honest, I don’t know that much about networking, yet I know enough that devices that you want to communicate have to be on the same subnet mask.

From there, and a bit of trial and error, I figured out how to change the assigned IP address of the HP Laserjet via a semi-hidden menu option.

Apple Forums user Strolls⁵ provided the key bit of information:

The LaserJet’s network section is hidden as the “EIO Menu”, which is covered in appendix page B-21 of the manual (page 221 in your PDF reading software). Changing “CFG Network=Yes”, then saving the option (the “select” button?), enables the sub-menu for editing the options to show up when you press the “next” button (the “item” button?). Same with “CFG TCP/IP”, but first disable Ethertalk & IPX/SPX because you’re not going to use them.

…

Try navigating the LaserJet’s menus as discussed previously to the “EIO Menu” (on mine it says “EIO 2 Jetdirect Menu”, then press “item” so that it says “CFG Network=No” and then the “value” button so it now says “CFG Network=Yes”, then “select” so a little star appears next to the “yes” (the star means the value has been saved”. Now when you press “item” again (immediately) you get to the next level of menus. Now you want “CFG TCP/IP=Yes*” and set DHCP (might also be called BOOTP – that’s the same thing) to yes. Make sure you set the little star before pressing item.

[From Apple – Support – Discussions – HP LaserJet and Snow Leopard …]

except in my case, I set the printer’s IP address manually, with the very primitive three button interface that might have been state of the art in 1997, but now seems worse than texting on a non-smart phone.

Yayy, I can print to the LaserJet again! Snow Leopard even had the correct printer drivers, once it could connect.

Can other printers use this new print protocol? Not sure. Anyone know?

The only other items to report, at least so far:

I got a message that three fonts were duplicates: Helvetica, Geneva, and Monaco – the Snow Leopard installer asked if I wanted to delete the old fonts, or live with conflict. I opted to remove the old fonts.

I also knew I had to add Rosetta: the binary translation software that translates code compiled for PowerPC chips so that the code can run on Intel chips. Since we still limp along running Eudora on some of our machines, I knew I would need this optional install. A simple process though, and Eudora⁶ seems to run fine.

Oh and this:

no idea what this even is, or from what application, if any, but I removed the extension anyway.

The system extension “/System/Library/Extensions/CDSDAudioCaptureSupport.kext” was installed improperly and cannot be used. Please try reinstalling it, or contact the product’s vendor for an update.

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Update: if you need some help figuring out all the details that I glossed over, check out Dave Greenbaum’s post How-To: Resurrect Your AppleTalk Printer in Snow Leopard

Footnotes:

1. well, all the ones that I’m going to install it on: have three other PowerPC Macs that won’t get upgraded [↩]
2. a wonderful Xerox Phaser 8560DN and a Samsung SCX-4500 that is ok [↩]
3. update: the Samsung SCX-4500 didn’t work either, but Samsung has a 10.6 driver listed at their website [↩]
4. for some reason, I didn’t do this, I don’t think [↩]
5. aka Joe Stroller [↩]
6. and whatever else [↩]