Apple Laserwriter 4/600 connection problem

[Mickwish]

I got given an old PowerMac 7500/100 with a Laserwriter 4/600. I want to try to set it up so I can print to it from my windoze boxes on the LAN.

Problem is, I can't even get it to print from the Mac.

It only has a cable with an up/down arrow symbol on it, and I connected that to the Mac printer port (GEOPORT). All the drivers and software seem to be in place, it just can't print to it.

Does it need a special AppleTalk connector or something? The person that gave it to me has no idea, as a relative gave it to them. The manual for it it says it can be shared using LocalTalk Bridge over Ethernet, and that is set up on the Mac, but since it won't print at all....

I am told it was all working before it was given to me. The printer does do it's self-test printing fine on power up.

Does anyone have any idea how to connect these LaserWriter printers to Macs? Any help would be appreciated, as I am stumped. :0

Also, does anyone know if a standard ethernet print server with a parrallel connector will allow me to share this printer on a LAN? It does have a second cable with a parallel connector, but the Mac doesn't have a parallel port.

Thanks
Mick

[NoLimit]

I have a Apple LaserWriter (Select 360), but it's been a long time since I've touched an Apple Macintosh computer. When I had this printer connected to an Apple Performa, it was through a localtalk cable. You might able to connect it to a print server with a parallel connector. I have my LaserWriter hooked up to my computer running Windows XP Pro with no problems. I also had it connected to a computer running Windows 2000 and also had no problems printing. Surprisingly Windows XP and Windows 2000 had the drivers built-in for this printer. I didn't have to go to Apple's website for them.

[Mickwish]

Well, I have discovered I can supposedly connect it directly to the Mac with the cable I have (System/Peripheral 8 cable). Wouldn't work even with windoze drivers when I directly connected it to a PC with parallel, but your printer is similar, so I might have another go on a diff PC (not 100% sure if LPT1 was enabled on that server or not ).

Will play more tonight.

Cheers
Mick

[Mickwish]

Well, I got it printing. I had AppleTalk set for Ethernet instead of the printer port.

Now I can't get it to be shared on the network. Even tried PCMACLAN. From what I can glean from google searches, looks like I would have to get a special LocalTalk/Ethernet connector box, as I can't get the LocalTalk software bridge to work. Ah, well, another piece of obsolete, useless hardware for my shed.

Cheers
Mick