How can I set up a network printer or set up a Mac as a print server?
While Apple’s true print server software — software to allow a single Mac to do virtually nothing but accept and queue print jobs — is long since defunct, there are a couple options for turning most Mac-compatible printers into network printers. The old dot-matrix ones are the hardest: The ImageWriter II and LQ had a LocalTalk option card that could be used to make the printer available on an AppleTalk network. The cards are available on eBay for under $20 most of the time. AppleShare Print Server, a very old piece of software that runs fine under System 6 (but may not work under System 7), may have the ability to turn a Plus or similar Mac into a print server for an ImageWriter without the network card, but finding this software is even harder than finding the network card for the printer. If you have an Apple-branded inkjet, try the Printer Share extension that ships as part of the Mac OS. It will make most, if not all, Apple-branded inkjets available on the network, but it’s best to
