USB Print Server support?

[neil]

Hi,

I'm a noob to the asus wl700ge - i'm looking at buying one this week as a backup device primarily, but also cos it has the print server option.

I have two printers, an old Epson Stylus Color 760, and an Epson R300 Photo printer - will these be supported on the wl700ge: i'm using a mac osx 10.4: if support is ropey built in, what would be the best custom firmware

Additionally, are the any compatibility issues with it and mac osx? can't see how, but you never know...;) - can i setup auto backup of files at regular intervals from the mac to the asus device??

I'm a big fan of asus in general (i'm writing this on my work asus w2v laptop, which is without doubt the most reliable laptop i've ever used!) and the 700ge is getting good reviews in the UK...any recommendations of where to buy? (scan computers look cheapest)

cheers for all advice

neil

[kfurge]

Asus maintains a collection of supported devices on their website. I'm using the print server feature on mine with a generic usb<->parallel converter and it works fine for me. YMMV.

Regarding mac support, others in this forum have had good success with mac compatibility, though not necessarily with the box as it ship from Asus. Many have installed more mac friendly packages with my custom firmware.

- K.C.

[neil]

many thanks...both printers mentioned are usb direct, so need for the parallel lead. if i understand rightly, only one usb->printer connection is allowed for the print server? (it'd be a bonus if more than one was supported!)

you mentioned more "mac friendly packages" - what exactly did you mean by that, specific components of your firmware, or packages running on the mac itself (i.e. the backup software), and if anyone has any experience of backing up from mac to the asus, that'd be handy!

...sorry for all the questions, just want to make sure i buy the right equipment!

[haraldrt]

Using the standard asus tools, you have to add your printer as a windows-printer using the gimp-print drivers. The shares could be mounted using smb or nfs ( I would prefer nfs for Mac OS X, because of its similar way of organizing permissions ).

With kfurge's firm you can install additional packages like cups wich makes printing a lot easier. you can also install netatalk to get afp shares. Until last month i used an Epson Stylus Color 880 connected to the Asus wl700gE. I have a Powermac G5, an iBook G3 600Mhz, both running OS X 10.4.10 and a Fujitsu-Siemens Scenic XS running OpenSuSE 10.2.

If you would like to automate the mounting of your shares I recommend Sharepoints for nfs or Mountwatcher for smb/afp.

The configuration of cups was a bit weired, because i only managed to use a "parallel printer" on device /dev/usp/lp0
I think the kernel will support more then one usb-printer so you should be able to use /dev/usb/lp1 for your second printer.

cu
Harald

[neil]

many thanks, haraldrt;

i've just bitten the bullet, bought a wl700ge, and installed last night - my epson color r300 works fine under windows, but have failed so far to get it to work under osx... i can get a driver of the epson site, so i know its got driver installed, but can't get it to work! it seems to send stuff to the printer ok, but then i get a 'host not reply, try again in 30secs' type message.

so what are my best options? i'd like to stick with existing out-of-the-box firmware for now (i plan to use kfurge's firmware in a few weeks, when i've got some time off to mess with it properly!)...do i need anything special from the osx end? do i need to use gimp-print? (i've got an old version at the moment, which is effectively the driver i'm using - can't remember how to uninstall this!) do i need to specify a queue for the printer, and if so, what?

osx always makes everything so hard...i'm sure the options i need are hidden somewhere, but my unix knowledge is erm, below average at best.

otherwise, whats next option....kfurge firmware and cups? do i still need gimp-print from the osx end?

many, many thanks in advance....