adding ADB to a modern Mac?

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guarthoguartho
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
My Epson printer recently decided to turn craptastic on me. I remembered that I have my brother's old Apple laserWriter, but I don't have any Macs with an ADB port these days. The USB->ADB adapters I've found seem rather expensive to me. Is there a PCI option out there? I didn't find anything like that on a MacMall search, but that's hardly conclusive . I'd love to fill my Quicksilver's last PCI slot with some old-school ADB joy.

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  • Reply 1 of 6
    benzenebenzene Posts: 338member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Guartho

    My Epson printer recently decided to turn craptastic on me. I remembered that I have my brother's old Apple laserWriter, but I don't have any Macs with an ADB port these days. The USB->ADB adapters I've found seem rather expensive to me. Is there a PCI option out there? I didn't find anything like that on a MacMall search, but that's hardly conclusive . I'd love to fill my Quicksilver's last PCI slot with some old-school ADB joy.



    I think you mean a serial port, as ADB is (was) used for mice, keyboards, joysticks, etc...

    I know that Griffin made an adaptor that replaced the modem with a serial port (or two?) for the B&W G3's, and there are several PCI cards that offer multiple serial ports, but I have no idea if they work with OSX.
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  • Reply 2 of 6
    guarthoguartho Posts: 1,208member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by benzene

    I think you mean a serial port, as ADB is (was) used for mice, keyboards, joysticks, etc...

    I know that Griffin made an adaptor that replaced the modem with a serial port (or two?) for the B&W G3's, and there are several PCI cards that offer multiple serial ports, but I have no idea if they work with OSX.



    Indeed... I forgot that "There was more 'n one of dem round ones" on the back of old-school Macs. Thanks for the reminder. I'll try searching again under serial port and see what happens. Thanks.
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  • Reply 3 of 6
    stoostoo Posts: 1,490member
    Laserwriters were (mostly?) Appletalk network printers. What you need is a (fairly old) Mac with Ethernet and a serial port, and Localtalk Bridge to join the Ethertalk/serial Localtalk networks. Something like an LC III would be ideal.
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  • Reply 4 of 6
    guarthoguartho Posts: 1,208member
    I don't have the printer here at school, but I'm pretty sure it's a Personal Laserwriter 300 and only has a serial port.
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  • Reply 5 of 6
    silvergoatsilvergoat Posts: 11member
    Guartho,



    If you indeed have a Personal LaserWriter 300, you will not be able to use it with OS X. This printer used QuickDraw as the printer language. Virtually any other LaserWriter from Apple would use Postscript level 1 or 2, but the PLW 300 was left back in time.



    As for work-arounds, this printer will work from Classic. So you could print to pdf and then open the pdf file with an old version of Acrobat Reader (which, in turn, will open Classic). While this works for fairly simple text documents, anything that is even remotely graphic-intensive will bomb. This printer only had 512K of memory and was not upgradeable (Did I mention being left back in time?)



    When I migrated to OS X, I ended up replacing my PLW 300 with a PLW 320 from eBay for US$10 and I use an old Performa and LocalTalk Bridge to make it work. These old laser printers were tanks, and I fully expect several more years out of mine. Since it is Postscript level 2, I do not anticipate this unit becomming obsolete anytime soon.
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  • Reply 6 of 6
    zozo Posts: 3,117member
    I had a Personal Laserwriter 320 and it ONLY had a Localtalk port.



    Cant vouch for any other model



    ADB, Localtalk, ... *sigh* the good old days



    good riddance
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