Jump to content
  • 0

Plotter/VW12/OS10 Compatibility


Ros

Question

I work in a small office with a mixture of Mac G4s and G5s working on both OS9 and OS10.3 and 4. We use a mixture of Vectorworks 9 and 12 and plot to a HP Designjet 430. Unfortunately, the G5s using OS10 will not work with our current plotter.

Ideally we all want to upgrade to VW12, using OS10/Tiger and purchase a new 24" Colour and B/W plotter but have heard of difficulties with compatibility and quality printing.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Link to comment

14 answers to this question

Recommended Posts

  • 0

Our office is running G4 & G5's with tiger and VW12. We recently purchased a HP Designjet 500 42" wide with a jetdirect card and haven't had any issues printing to it.

The only issue that has come up is that the driver doesn't support rotating the paper when you are printing 24x36 so you waste paper and have to trim off the excess. You can get around it by setting up the page size as 36x24 and then rotating it...

Hope that helps...

Aaron

Link to comment
  • 0

I think you should be able to get the HP430 to work with the drivers included in OS 10.4. If there is no 430 driver, try the 450 or 488 driver, they are all basically the same machine, with slightly different features.

We use an HP488CA with OS 10.4 on an ethernet network. It work well- MUCH better than with the inferior software HP provided with the plotter when we purchased it!

We use the HP network interface device ( I think they call it the "jet direct?")provided with the 488CA to connect the plotter to an ethernet network. You may need this.

Link to comment
  • 0

I have a G5 running Tiger. My 455CA works just fine. The 430 is on the list of supported printers. Just add it using the Print Utility.

Do a search on this board and you will find lots of info on setting up a 400 series HP printer under OSX.

Link to comment
  • 0

Thanks for the help guys.

However, one thing that crops up on HP's website when trying to download the drivers is this: "HP strongly recommends that you do not install our software under the root account in Mac OSX " ...... is this a potential problem?

Link to comment
  • 0

Do not go to the HP website for this plotter. HP does not support this plotter under OSX. All of the software that you need to run your plotter is already part of the system software of OSX.

You do not need to download anything. You already have what you need. Setup will take you the same amount of time that I am spending typing this message.

I have posted several messages on how to setup a 400 series plotter under OSX. Do a search for 430 or 455 and I am sure that you will find all the info that you need.

Link to comment
  • 0

If you are still interested in upgrading your plotter, here is my two cents. We went through a lot of research and came down to with the Epson 7800 or the HP 130. We opted for the HP 130 because it was cheaper. It works really well most of the time. We gets some plots with some skewed graphics every now and then when printing pdfs. If we re-rip a VW file into PDF at a higher quality settign, the problem goes away. Otherwise, we have been very happy with the machine.

Link to comment
  • 0

CEA, Could you tell me if you have any specific drivers, ESP or GIMP or other running the 488ca? Mine was working fine, but began to slow down, and now cannot print but a few lines and quits. It plots the set-up page from a PC without problem and I've upgraded flashware in the JetDirect.

Please reply here or to mark@msnrcd.com many thanks, Mark Stech-Novak

Link to comment
  • 0

I'm running VW12 on a brand new MacBook Pro (Intel) on OS 10.4.6 and I'm suddenly having a lot of problems printing to a Cannon iR2200 printer that we use in the office. I say suddenly because I have printed before from this computer with this software to this printer. Now all of a sudden the program will not recognize any paper size besides 8.5x11. Has anybody else experienced something similar? Anyone know of any fixes?

Link to comment
  • 0
CEA, Could you tell me if you have any specific drivers, ESP or GIMP or other running the 488ca?

We are currently using the print driver that comes as a part of Mac OS 10.4.6. OS 10.4.6 gives two options for the 488CA; we are using the "CUPS+Gimp-Print v4.2.6-pre1" driver. It has worked well in our office over a small ethernet network.

Good Luck!

Link to comment
  • 0

Back again.

We're close to placing our order for the HP500, there's just a couple of things I forgot to mention originally.

All our Macs and printers/plotters are networked through a Windows 2003 server. Is this going to cause any further problems?

Also, we currently use a JetDirect Ex Plus box at the HP 430. Can the HP 500 be directly attached to a switch or will we need a new JetDirect box?

And finally, we'll be ordering some new G5's which will be running on OSX 10.5. Has anyone had any compatibility problems with 10.5 and the HP 500?

Many thanks for all the help.

Edited by Ros
Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Answer this question...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...