YES! Your trusty old HP Laserjet 4MV will work with Snow Leopard.
If you are lucky enough to have a HP Laserjet 4MV postscript printer, you won’t want to lose it just because your Mac OS 10.5.6 machine won’t talk to it. Appletalk goes away in Snow Leopard, so you have to reconfigure your printer to connect via an IP address.
Snow Leopard comes with the printer driver for the HP Laserjet 4B/4MV Postscript, so you can set up your printer to use it when you are adding your printer in the System Preferences>Print & Fax pane.
Here are the instructions that worked for me, found online at <this page>. It’s the answer given by Witczaker.
My situation was slightly different, but by reading your post I figured it out. My MacPro is connected to a wireless router supplied by our Phone company, after upgrading to Snow Leopard, I lost my connection to my HP 4MV which has been my workhorse for years. I tried changing the IP address on the printer as you suggested, but even though the Printer setup would add the printer to my list of printers, when I tried to print, the MacPro could not communicate with the HP 4MV. Eventually, here is how I solved it. I went to “About this mac/More info” menu selected Network/Ethernet1, which is the port I have the cable from the wireless router coming into. This showed me the address of my MacPro, the address of the Router, and the Subnet Mask.
Now I went back to the MIO settings menu on the HP 4MV and made the IP (IP Byte) address similar to the address of my MacPro keeping all the numbers and dots the same as the MacPro but changing the last number to something different (201). Then I made sure the Subnet Mask numbers (SM Byte) on the 4MV were identical to the ones I saw on the MacPro. Then in the Gateway settings (GW Byte) in the MIO menu I put in the Router numbers I got off the MacPro. That did it, I plugged in the IP address in the printer setup “Line Printer Daemon – LPD” and it worked.
On the HP Laserjet 4MV, you change the printer’s settings by setting the printer to “Offline” and pressinf the MENU button until you get to MIO. Then you press the ITEM button to cycle through the MIO choices.
The first thing you set in the MIO menu is CFG NETWORK=YES. It is set to NO when you first see it. You change that to YES by pressing the + button and then the ENTER button to get the change to stick. An asterlsk appears, telling you that the change has happened. NOTE: the CFG NETWORK setting toggles back to NO eacn time you use it. Don’t think that your changes have not taken, when you go back and find the setting has reverted to NO. This is normal. You have to set it to YES each time, so that you can make the other changes.
These instructions helped me with the settings process:
Configure HP Laserjet 4MV to work with Snow Leopard by giving the printer a fixed IP number.
This is how to change the IP Address on the Front panel:
Press ONLINE BUTTON to put printer OFFLINE.
Press MENU until you get MIO MENU
Press ITEM, press + SIGN to get CFG NETWORK=YES
Press ENTER (you get asterisk)Press ITEM until
Config TCP/IP=YES
Press ENTER (you get asterisk)Press Item to get BOOTP=NO
Hold Item and press + sign continually until you get to the first IP number desired,
repeat 3 more times for the last 3 IP numbers.
Be sure to press ENTER to have each set of numbers saved.I used IP No. 192.168.0.20
And Subnet 255.255.255.0
(which is the second set of numbers you enter.Then go to Mac System Preferences, to the Print & Fax preference pane
Delete any old printer by clicking – minus signthen Click the + plus sign to add your printer.
In the Protocol I used Line Demon Protocol and typed in the IP number of the router in this case (192.168.0.1)
[Update: I am still using the 4MV with OS X 10.7 Lion. Works just as it did with Snow leopard.]
COMMENTS
16 Comments
Elaine
February 20th, 2011 10:47 PM
Hey Ryan,
Thank you for posting this. I have followed the instructions exactly a number of times, but I am still not able to print. I can print through my son’s iMac, but when he leaves for college I will be out of luck.
Do you have any more suggestions?
Thank you.
Bill
February 20th, 2011 11:26 PM
Elaine, have you looked through this page?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2267630&tstart=0
stu
January 2nd, 2012 04:47 AM
Bill,
YES!!!!!! Our trusty 4MV was working perfectly fine, as a shared printer (bonjour?) on our network, with 10.6.8 installed . . no problem. Then suddenly, a few weeks ago, we started getting some sort of strange “printer canceled request etc. etc.” and couldn’t get it going again. NOTHING else changed on our system . . just stopped working.
I found this post earlier this evening and followed your instructions. (I didn’t get to the subnet section . . didn’t matter.) The network found it perfectly and it printed!
Thanks SO much for your advice,
stu
Bill
January 2nd, 2012 09:28 AM
Delighted to be of help, Stu. My 4MV is still trucking along and considering what it cost years ago, I’m glad it is! Thanks for leaving a comment.
Ronald Ballister
January 9th, 2012 01:23 PM
I too have a 4MV and just bought a Mac PRO. It has 2 drives installed, one running 10.7.2 (Lion) and the other running 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard). I connected the 4MV using a Parallel to USB cable and it works when I print in InDesign on either drive. However, when I print a page on the internet it will print the page successfully and then print an additional page: ERROR: timeout OFFENDING COMMAND: timeout STACK:
Is there any way to stop it from doing this?
Thanks.
marc
January 16th, 2012 04:58 AM
Bill,
Thousand thanks for your instructions : they saved my 4MV!
May I add two tips for those who will struggle within the MIO MENU ?
1. Once the first byte of the IP is reached (and saved!), a single press on ITEM will present the second byte, and so on. Continuing this process allows you to scroll successively through the bytes of the Subnet, the Syslog server (not useful for me) and the Gateway address (my router).
2.Pressing continually the + sign increases the byte number from 0 to 255. Pressing continually on MAJ and +sign decreases the byte number from 0 to 255,254, and so on.
Very useful for large numbers or for a correction if you have gone past the target…
Again thank you
Marc
Bill
January 16th, 2012 09:41 AM
I’m delighted that this post is helping to keep some 4MVs going. It’s a good, rugged printer that cost plenty in its day. If we can maximize its usefulness, let’s do it!
Thank you for adding to the information. It’s all good stuff.
Pat
February 6th, 2012 10:29 PM
I’ve tried following these instructions on my 4MV (trying to get it to print with Snow Leopard via Airport). I can set CFG=YES but TCP/IP isn’t an item on the MIO menu. Any help? Thanks.
Bill
February 6th, 2012 11:16 PM
Yes, Pat. Here’s some help. After you have set CFG to YES, press the ENTER button to make your choice “stick”. Then, when you go back to your ITEM button and click through, you’ll see that you have more choices. One of those choices will be TCP/IP. Good luck!
Pat
February 7th, 2012 12:11 AM
Thanks, Bill. OK, got through the menu and still no success. I re-read your instruvctions and I’m trying to print via Airport. So shouldn’t I set the printer’s IP and subnet mask to coordinate with the Airport, rather than my Mac?
I can’t believe what a nightmare this is and I appreciate all help.
Thanks.
Pat
February 7th, 2012 12:51 AM
Please ignore my previous post. I re-read VERY CAREFULLY and I think I’ve followed the directions but my 4MV refuses to accept the new settings. I’ve been very careful to hit Enter before moving to the next item but my test page still shows the original IP, subnet mask, etc.
Just in case it helps, here’s what I’m doing:
In addition to setting TCP/IP to YES, I also have to set CONFG TCP/IP to Yes.
IP: same as my MacBook Pro (169.254.79.48) but instead of 48, I’m using 12
SM Byte: 255.255.0.0 (same as MacBook Pro)
LG Byte: I’m leaving this as is 5.5.2.5
GW Byte: 255.255.255.0 (same as Airport)
Suggestions? THANK YOU.
Pat
February 7th, 2012 06:41 PM
OMG, I finally got this to work.
I found these instructions on an HP page. The step I was missing near the end – press Online to actually save your settings. Here are the instructions with my notes. I’m printing from a Mac Powerbook, Snow Leopard, to a 4MV via an Airport Express.
1. On the printer, press the ONLINE button to go Offline. Press MENU, repeatedly, until the following message appears on the control panel:
MIO MENU
Press ITEM . CFG NETWORK=NO* will appear.
Press the PLUS button once. CFG NETWORK=YES* will appear.
Press ENTER or SELECT .
Press ITEM repeatedly until CFG TCP/IP=NO* appears.
Press the PLUS button. CFG TCP/IP=YES* will appear.
Press ENTER or SELECT .
Press ITEM until BOOTP=YES* appears.
Press the PLUS button. BOOTP=NO will appear.
Press ENTER or SELECT .
Press ITEM . IP BYTE 1 = (value) will appear.
Press the PLUS button until the value of the first byte of the IP address appears on the control-panel display. By pressing SHIFT and the PLUS button, the value will decrease. (The IP address of my Router is 10.0.1.1. The first three IP bytes need to match this so I entered 10)
Press ENTER or SELECT .
Press ITEM to continue. Configure the remaining bytes of the IP address, pressing ENTER after each one. (I used 0 for IP BYTE 2, 1 for IP BYTE 3, and 8 (a number that isn’t being used by anything else) for IP BYTE 4)
Press ITEM until SM BYTE= appears. Configure the subnet mask bytes (SM BYTE 1, 2, 3, 4) to match the subnet mask of the Airport, pressing ENTER after each one – mine was 255.255.255.0.
Press ITEM until GW BYTE= appears. Configure the default gateway (GW BYTE 1, 2, 3, 4 to match the IP address of the Airport, pressing ENTER after each one – mine was 10.0.1.1)
Press ONLINE . (This is what makes the settings take effect.)
Press ONLINE again to go offline.
Press MENU until TEST comes up.
Press ITEM until SELF TEST comes up.
Press ENTER to print a self-test page to verify the IP settings.
If the test page does not show the correct settings, power cycle the printer and reprint the test page.
Press ONLINE to go back online.
In System Prefs, Print & Fax, add the printer as follows:
Protocol: Line Printer Daemon – LPD
Address: The address you set as IP BYTES (mine was 10.0.1.8)
Name: Whatever you want
Print Using: HP LaserJet 4V/4MV PostScript
It worked for me and I wish every else lots of luck. This takes patience and perseverance. Also thanks to the many useful posts I found in my travels on the web.
admin
February 7th, 2012 07:14 PM
Pat, congratulations and thank you for coming back and sharing what you found out. I’m sure it will help someone else keep their 4MV going. Cheers!
Sarah D
February 12th, 2012 10:09 AM
I set up the 4MV with OS X Lion 10.7.3, via a Belkin router (with an ethernet cable attached to the printer). For a while the printer worked beautifully – thanks to the help of this forum and others. Several weeks later I started to get the ‘printer is busy’ message, and eventually realised that the router had temporarily changed its IP address to match that of the the printer (192.168.2.2). As soon as the router changed its address again, the printer worked. So my next task is to set a static IP address for the router so that it does not prevent tasks like printing and file sharing. Another tip to add is that Lion does not have the 4MV Postscript file that seems to be installed in Leopard but the Laserwriter Pro 810 installed works perfectly well instead.
Bill
February 12th, 2012 10:19 AM
Thanks for adding your experience to the tips here, Sarah. It’s turning into quite a helpful collection.
Chris B
June 18th, 2012 03:43 PM
This information from everyone is really helpful and I sense I am closer than ever to being able to use my 4 MV with my iMac (running OSX 10.7.4). But…
I still can’t! The printer was working fine until I made the big switch to Mac from PC.
I have followed Pat’s step-by-step instructions several times: the Mac IP is xxx.xxx.1.64, router is xxx.xxx.1.254, subnet mask is 255.255.255.0 and I have set the printer IP as xxx.xxx.1.201. Just to be sure I have connected the printer to the router with a new ethernet cable. The router is a wireless router but is connected to the Mac using an ethernet cable and works fine.
The only point I can’t get right in the guidance is where Pat finally says select Print Using:HP LaserJet4V/4MV Postscript. How do I find/set up the printer with this when adding it? Whatever I try to do the Mac eventually completes this with “Generic PostScript Printer”. It then comes back with “unable to verify printer on network” and “unable to connect to xxx.xxx.1.201 due to an error”.
Any ideas would be very gratefully received.
Thank You!