Monday's Mac Gadget by John F. Braun Want To Share Your Mac Printer W/UNIX & PC? Try Print66! October 2nd, 2000 Print66 0.6 (Freeware) Barijaona Ramaholimihaso When operating in a pure Mac environment, setting up a printer usually requires little more than plugging it in, and then selecting the printer from the Chooser. This ease of use is largely due to the AppleTalk networking protocol, which automates much of the network setup which would otherwise require mucking about with network settings. However, there may be cases where your network doesn't allow AppleTalk, or you may want to share your printer with non-Mac computers. Print66 can solve your problem... Print66 is a LPD (Line Printer Daemon) server for the Mac. LPD is a method of sharing a printer on a TCP/IP network, and is common in the mainframe and UNIX worlds. Print66 comes with both PPC and 68K versions. Before you use the package, you'll need to drag the Spool Folder into your System Folder. Then you'll need to edit the LPD.config file, which sets parameters LPD needs to know. No Mac interface here, sorry. But there are plenty of comments and examples in the file so you should be OK. Just make sure to specify the name or address of machines allowed to print to your printer with the HOST parameter. You Can Define a LPR and Print to a LPD Printer You can then start up Print66, and LPR (Line Printer Remote) clients can print to your printer. As a matter of fact, Mac users can also print to LPD printers. Just use the Desktop Printer Utility and, when prompted, say that you want to create a printer of type Printer (LPR). Specify the IP address and queue name, and click the Verify button just to make sure things are working. You can then print to a LPD printer as easily as to any other one. So start sharing your printer with your UNIX and PC colleagues, and try Print66. Have any other Mac OS Gadgets that you think totally rule? Let John know via e-mail, so he can review it, or share it with the rest of us in the Mac Gadget Forum. Monday's Mac Gadget is here to help you with those cool things that we all just have to have on our Macs. Shareware, Freeware, Postcardware, Emailware, and even commercial apps, Monday's Mac Gadget is here to help you find and use the best of these programs. John is a software engineer who works in the corporate R&D group of a Fortune 500 company, focusing on all aspects of communications technology. He has several degrees that claim he knows what he's doing when it comes to computers. After watching co-workers reinstall Windows, search for device drivers, and experience other horrors during the day, he's glad that he comes home to a Mac (compatible) computer. Have any comments, suggestions, or favorite Gadgets? Drop John a line at You can also Post Your Comments below. Current Monday's Mac Gadget Want to Supercharge Your Dock? Check Out Todos! - August 21st Worried About Your Mac Getting Jacked? Get JackSMS - June 12th Want iChat with Tabs? Try Chax! - April 3rd Visit Monday's Mac Gadget Archives for more great Mac Gadgets!