Comments on USB-Equipped Ethernet Print Servers?

An Anonymous Coward asks: "I'm looking to purchase an external Ethernet print server with an USB printer interface. I've only found two such beasts HP JetDirect 175x and Sercomm PS5800). Do I have any other hardware options? Do USB print servers work with any USB printer, or are there driver issues?" Comments, anyone? Information about running such a box under free operating systems would also be nice.

HP Jet Direct

[Khopesh]

is a VERY nice little box. it ran a few of the others out of the game a few years ago. I did tech support (ewww) for a company that used these, although not with usb. if they're as good with usb as they are with standard parallel printer ports they i highly recommend it. the configuration is very well done and the test print command gives you all the id & info you need.

Re:Nice one

[King of the World]

Well, I would appreciate if Timothy would do more stories as a rap (it's how you get through to the kids, you know) but otherwise I'm quite happy with his efforts.

JetDirect

[penguinboy]

I've used parallel JetDirect boxes (EX, EX Plus, EX Plus3) with excellent results. Windows NT/2000/XP and *nix can all send jobs to JetDirect devices via LPR. Win9x machines clients require either HP's JetDirect software loaded client, an LPR add-on, or a Windows print server. AppleTalk is supported by JetDirect boxes for use by Macs.

Re:JetDirect

[balamw]

The current batch of JetDirect boxes are very different from the ones you and I have experience with. The old ones were great, sometimes quirky, but great. The new ones, well I'll let you decide...

On the plus side, the new ones are more internet happy. They offer web based configuration and support IPP (Internet Printing Protocol). However, unlike their predecessors, these units are not flash upgradeable and thus they can't be patched for new features/bugfixes. We have some minor issues with our 1st generation 170X and DHCP, but can't fix it without replacing the box.

Anyhow, to answer the original poster's question. HP has a list of supported printers (all HP branded) at their site. Unclear if any other USB printer would work. Link below. http://www.hp.com/cposupport/networking/support_do c/bpj06867.html [hp.com]

Macs and LPR

[green pizza]

Ugh, avoid AppleTalk... chatty, not easily routable, and just plain old. Use LPR (prefered) or samba.

Modern versions of "Classic" Mac OS (7.1 Pro to 9.2.2) have an app (sometimes in the Apple Extras folder, sometimes on the system CD) called "Desktop Printer Utility" that'll let you tell the machine to print to an LPR printer/printserver.

Mac OS X does not support AppleTalk, but does come with both native BSD flavored LPR as well as Samba. This is easily configured from the Preferences/ControlPanel. Power users can do a quick Google search for more info. Samba ships with Mac OS X 10.1.0 and newer. For fun, pull up a terminal on Mac OS X and print from the CLI... "lpr -P printserver.yourcompany.com mydoc.ps"

Any cheap old hardware.

[Perdo]

Get an old p166 box and load it up... simple.

Re:Any cheap old hardware.

[boopus]

A print server as dedicated hardware is probably a better idea than running a whole new computer as a print server. The power requirements alone would pay for the print server pretty quickly. Unless you really want to implement a real print server, with job prioritization, ques and multiple printers, it just isn't worth it.

Also, if you're leaving a computer-illiterate office with a print server, they're going to know one way to fix a problem - unplug and plug it back in. Your average linux box won't handle this too well. (I know it's linux so it'll never crash)

Re:Any cheap old hardware.

[toast0]

with ext3fs or reiser fs, or any other journalling fs, a suprise cold boot like that shouldn't cause permanent damage

Re:Any cheap old hardware.

[mbyte]

be carefull with that p166 box. IIRC nearly all of the original pentium line mainboards had faulty or non working usb support ... (at least the older intel based chipsets did have, anyone remember USB = Useless Serial Board? ;)

Avoid the JetDirects

[twixel]

Jetdirect are not very good under load. If you have multiple computers trying to print to the same JD box, it will only accept one connection at a time. and it will occasionally crash. It's been two years since I last admin'ed one of the JD, so maybe the new generation is better, but for rock-solid performance, I can only recommend AXIS. Easy to set up from almost any OS, can keep all its ports busy at all times.

Re:Avoid the JetDirects

[Bazman]

So only have one computer talk to it at once. How? By setting up a unix box as an LPD server, and define a queue that prints to the Jet Direct. All client machines print to the queue on the LPD server, and you configure the JetDirect so that only the LPD server has access to it.

If your server is close enough to your printer, you can do without the JetDirect box and plug the printer straight into the server, but our print server is a long way from our printer, so the printer is connected to a JetDirect box in the user lab, and the server is tucked away in the machine room.

Yes, I know its another single-point-of-failure, but ours hasn't failed for years....

Re:Avoid the JetDirects

[qurob]

I've got 12 printers, all on JetDirects. I've got 60 users printing to them, NEVER had an issue with more than one person printing at a time....

The Tetronix Phaser 850 we have, will take a shit under multiple print jobs however.

Re:Avoid the JetDirects

[tmbrodie]

I've used an old PII-266 running RH7.1. The reason is that it has two USB ports built in, and I can then have up to 8 printers attached with small cheap USB hubs. I also use smart parallel-to-USB connector cables to attach just about any printer to my print server.

Although some manufacturers of these cables say they will only work for certain printers, this is only true if you're on a brain-dead OS using their device drivers.

So far I've used an HP Laserjet 4 (yes, that old!) and a brand new Epson LQ570e forms printer on the same box. Works a treat!

Costs? Cdn$189 for the off-lease Compaq DP-4000, Cdn$49 ea. for the cables. Compare that to the cost of one of those appliances. It takes a very long time to burn Cdn$250 worth of electricity with that Compaq!

And, I get to run both cups and smb to share the printers, and administer them remotely.