Setup Printer sharing in Snow Leopard OS

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard brings a large number of under-the-hood improvements, most of which are not seen by normal users. However, changes to the Print Scan and architecture will affect users of the older printers, scanners, and all-in-one unit. Here are some useful information if you want to do this upgrade.

Apple has bundled printer driver with the latest version of Mac OS X and has taken further steps things in Snow Leopard, this time including software drivers for your multifunction device from Apple, Brother, Canon, Epson, Fuji-Xerox, Gestentner, HP, Infotec, Lanier, Lexmark, NRG, Ricoh, Samsung, Savin, Tektronix, Xerox, and select the driver for some other producers. Check your device against Apple's list to see if compatible for print and / or scanning the Snow Leopard.

Apple is also providing driver updates through Apple Software update for devices from Brother, Canon, Epson, HP, and Lexmark (and possibly others in the future). Now instead of getting individual updates for each device from manufacturers’ websites, printer driver updates come directly through Apple’s Software Update mechanism. For other manufacturers, you can keep checking for updates in the first link above, and the respective manufacturer’s website.

A big change in Snow Leopard is the discontinuation of AppleTalk support. AppleTalk, a long-lived protocol for printing and file sharing, saw it’s final iteration in Leopard, and is now completely gone in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. If you have a printer that uses AppleTalk, you can try to see if it supports any other methods for printing, such as Bonjour, IP Printing, or generic PCL support. There are some very old printers that support only PCL and AppleTalk, so you can try the generic PCL drivers for those if all other options are unavailable.

After some fiddling around I found a solution:

1. Go into System Preferences and go to the Print & Fax panel.
2. Right click on the printer and choose “Reset Printing System…”. This will remove all of your printers.
3. Hit the “+” and add the printer back, it should now be reset and have fixed whatever was fubar before.
4. Click on the “Sharing Preferences” button (or go to the “Sharing” System Preference panel)
5. Make sure that “Printer Sharing” is checked and that your printer’s name is also checked and that “Everyone” is set to “Can Print”
6. On the remote machine you want to remove the printer and add it back in through the System Preferences Print & Fax panel