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Using the Stylus RIP Professional with Macintosh

Sharing the Printer on a Network

EPSON Stylus RIP Professional 2.0 can be used on any AppleTalk or EtherTalk network with two or more Macintosh computers.

There are two ways to use Stylus RIP Professional as a print server on a network, as shown by the following illustrations. Choose the environment that best suits your needs.

In the illustration below, the Macintosh that is directly connected to the printer and contains the Stylus RIP Professional software is called the "print server." The other Macintosh computers are called clients. The print server in this case is a Macintosh that has the power to receive and send a lot of data very quickly.

a. client
b. printer
c. USB or FireWire cable
d. print server

Note:

The most efficient way to use Stylus RIP Professional as a print server is to install the software on a Power Macintosh that has strong data management capabilities and devote it to the management of print data that is sent over the network. The printing speed is faster with this setup than if your printer and Stylus RIP Professional enabled Macintosh were directly connected in a standalone environment.

When printing from a client Macintosh, the print job is first sent to the print sever. The print server then places the print job in the print queue and sends the job to the printer in the order received.

EPSON recommends that you connect the printer and print server by using a USB or FireWire cable, as shown in the illustration above.

a. client
b. print server
c. printer
d. optional interface card

In a network environment, the printer is shared by multiple Macintosh computers. To connect the printer to the network in this manner, you will need to install an optional interface card into the printer and set it up for use on an EtherTalk network. After this part of the configuration is complete, you must then set the interface card or another device on the network as the print server. The illustration above shows an example of a general network environment.

In the network environment shown in the illustration above, you need to install the Stylus RIP Professional on all Macintosh computers from which you want to print PostScript files. One more factor to consider when choosing what network architecture to use is the amount of traffic generated on the network. In the first illustration, print data is only sent once over the network, while it is sent twice in the second illustration; once to the print server and once to the printer. You may notice delays on the network if complex data is often sent for printing.

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