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Tip: Setting up a Minolta PagePro 9100 printer under Snow Leopard

Mac OSX 10.6 brought quite a few new but subtle features and changes, one of those subtle changes was the dropping of support for the AppleTalk protocol. Many people who upgraded to Snow Leopard got caught out and suddenly found themselves with a non-functioning printer.

I was aware of this change but even so I found myself in the same position, and despite all the various articles and posts I read I couldn't get my Konica Minolta PagePro 9100 printer working. I resorted to sharing my printer via an old iMac that was running OSX 10.4 and printing that way, it worked but would take a long time to print a single page and frequently had to be rebooted to keep it working.

After running like that for a few months I decided to try and figure out how to get the PagePro 9100 working directly again as I couldn't handle using the same slow process any more. Amazingly I managed to find a Konica Minolta setup guide and it actually worked! So here's the process: 

Configuring a PagePro 9100 printer under Snow Leopard

I followed instructions in an old Konica Minolta support PDF document that you can download from the Konica Minolta site, unfortunately their site is rubbish and doesn't let you link to files easily so here's a link to download it:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18567/Crown-MacOS10_3-installation.pdf

Note: Before you start you'll need to know your printers IP address, the PagePro 9100 can be set to have a fixed IP address but this wasn't needed when printing using AppleTalk so yours may not be set up with one. You'll need to get that changed using the printer's controls on the top. You really need to get this sorted out before you can proceed any further.

Ok, here's the simple setup process:

• You need to set the printer up using the IP printing method, you'll see a blue circular globe icon in the Add Printer dialog so click that option.
• Use the Line Printer Daemon option under the 'Protocol' drop down.
• Enter the fixed IP address of your printer into the 'Address' field.
• Enter a queue name in the 'Queue' field (I used PagePro 9100). 
• The 'Name' field will probably have taken the IP address automatically but this can be changed to PagePro 9100 too.
• Select the 'Select Printer Software' in the 'Print Using' dropdown at the bottom. You should be able to find the Konica Minolta PagePro 9100 PPD file in the list. Choose that from the list.

Set the appropriate trays / bins etc for your printer etc and then that should be you set up hopefully!