It has been a while since I wrote a Howto. As always I hope somebody fins this interesting.
Equiptment and software used:
Quadra 650
OS: 7.6.1
Epson Fx-890 Printer
Epson Appletalk Card B 82312* (localtalk)
Network Printer Driver V2.0A (Optained from Epson.com FX-870 driver selection of OS system 7)
Standard localtalk printer cable (I had one left over from a personal laser writer 300)
StufIt Expander (For new mac users. hqx and sea images is compressed files to fit on floppy disks.)
Driver Used:
Note: Don't use the one you find for the card on the epson website. That is a serial driver. Not the network driver and thus will present you with baud rate.
The disk comes with 3 differnt drivers. You need to move the correct driver into the extension folder.
Use the epson fx driver. This is explained in the readme on the disk.
Naming Utility:
When I ran the naming utility it explained my appltalk software was older and would only find the printer connected to the same appletalk zone.
This was nice utility to not only name the printer on the network. It also has a tool you can hit to identify the printer. It basicly just prints out a line of text.
Manuals:
I found a few different types of manuals via pdf files. The most common manual talks about physically installing, package contents, and how you can use this card to have your epson fx printer and use
local talk to print. The next manual goes into more detail & seems to be a slighlty different revision. You might run in a third manual for C823121. This manual is for a card that support epson lq printers.
It has two ports on it (One Localtalk and One serial). However the install instructions for the software (that seems to be missing in the manuals I found for the other card) is pretty much correct. Also the disks contain a readme on how to install the software.
Hardware Revisions:
From what I can tell we have 2 different reivsions of cards. This is noted by jumpers. The card I have compared to the manaul has 4 jumpers (J1-J4).
While all the manuals I have found show only 1 jumper and that is for testing. I tried each jump on my card and at this point.
Only one jumper seemed to do anything different. It does a test print.
Issues:
I just started using the software. So take this with a grain of salt.
I did a desktop print and either I didn't wait long enough or it locked up. I think I didn't wait long enough. I printed out a page of
the manual for features of os 7.6.1 and it printed fine. The printing seems to only be uni-directional.
The disk has a epson printer monitor that sometimes seems to work and sometimes get stuck when opening.
Additional Thoughts:
Would be nice to find the correct manual and more software versions. I also hope one of the switchs change the card to support serial printing. This was a confusing part for me.
The C823121 card support serial and thus would seem to support Apple IIgs. I could not fnd any software for appltalk via the iigs.
Have a good Day,
Josh