Xerox Phaser 6500 on Mac 10.4.11 Classic

I purchased a Xerox Phaser 6500 colour laser printer, knowing that it’s specified for Mac OS X 10.5 or higher. I am stuck at 10.4.11 for the moment, until I finish the second edition of my book. But I have lots of pages to churn out ’til it’s done.

On the off-chance, I installed the drivers under 10.4.11. Installation proceeds without a hitch – as it shouldn’t, because I installed on an unsupported OS! Then, any attempt to print in a Caron or Classic app fails - as expected. But not gracefully: The app just crashes.

Shockingly, though, printing in Classic – in my case, FrameMaker 7.0p577 – works perfectly!

Also, Acrobat 4.0 (4.0, no dot-dot version) prints – though you may receive a pair of spurious “Connection failed” messages referring to a connection to the printer.

Double-sided printing is selectable, and functions, but only if the paper size loaded and chosen at the printer matches the Page Setup parameters. (I tried just US Letter.)

The printer interprets straight-up Adobe PSL3/PDF; I wish Xerox had just done the right thing and figured out how to ship PS across to it, even from 10.4.11. I’d be happy for no features, just printing, under 10.4.11.

If anyone knows how to get this to function more generally under 10.4.11 – that is, Carbon and Cocoa apps – I’d love to hear about it.

Copyright © 2011-10-06
Charles Poynton