Help - I'm tearing my hair out - printer problems

[pigsinmud]

Ok. Dh recently bought a laser printer on ebay. It is an old HP5000n laser printer - he wants it for publishing and can't use our inkjet printers for that.
It has a parallel printer port, but a friend of his said no problem you'll be able to set it up as a network printer via hub. HOW? His friend omitted this vital piece of information. I spent a whole day last Friday fiddling with it and I am ready to kick the damn thing. Dh is useless with technology and I am not exactly great.

I tried connecting the ethernet cable to home hub - imac immediately found the printer, but can't talk to it - I think snow leopard cannot use Appletalk which the printer uses. Dh has all his stuff on vista running laptop, but this cannot find the printer. It found the printer via the imac, but no good.I don't know what to do and I feel another day going down the pan.

[niceguy2]

If you know what the IP address of the printer is (try printing out a status page). Then you should be able to configure Vista with a network printer. I don't have vista so cant give you the exact steps. But basically create a printer, when asked if it's local or network, choose local. Instead of LPT1, choose "Create new port" and choose standard TCP/IP. In printer name type the IP address (eg. 192.168.1.200) then next next etc until finished.

Sorry can't be more specific but Vista sucks and i refuse to use it.

[pigsinmud]

Thanks. I do have the IP address and I have tried that and zilch. I haven't used such a complicated printer in years. It has it's own menu with hundreds of option. I assume I need network config ON, but whenever I select that it seems to automatically deselect it.

I shall pass it over to dh and tell him to sort it out. I'll follow your instructions again and then THAT'S IT!!

[CruelAndUnusualParenting]

The "create new port" stuff is how it was done on XP.

Vista should be a lot simpler. When I needed to get Vista to talk to a networked HP printer I just told it to search for network printers and it found it and set it up with no difficulty. I couldn't say why that isn't working for you.