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- Need stand-alone PPD (print driver) for HP LaserJet MFP M29w...

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10-27-2019 09:42 AM - edited 10-28-2019 08:38 AM
Can't seem to find stand-alone print drivers like back in the day. They seem to have to be installed from an HP app that doesn't run under Snow Leopard. (I tried inspecting the application package to see if I could extract the individual drivers but, drat!, they aren't loose among the various resources and subdirectories.) Anyone know of a website that has downloads of the individual PPDs (print drivers)? I tried some of the other HP LaserJet MFP drivers among the some 900 drivers that came with Snow Leopard (because of course the MFP M29w didn't even exist back then), and my OS can create the printer & print queue, and print job status messages look like things print, with no error messages, but nothing actually makes it to my printer. The generic print drivers don't work, either. Anyone know of a close LaserJet print driver that will work to at least print text?
(I'm stuck in Snow Leopard for a reason, and I'm not in a position right now to use something else, so please let's find out whether it's possible or impossible to make my situation work.)
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Edit: I found my way here to a question closely similar to mine, with an Accepted Solution:
...that struck me as curious, because the Solution says that, "I did a double check on this printer, there is no driver available for your Mac OS," and his step-by-step instructions don't address the fact that the correct driver didn't appear in the Printers list, yet the original poster's reply seemed to indicate that it nevertheless worked for him. Perhaps he found a driver for a printer close to his model that worked. In any event, I don't see what the admonished being connected to the internet has to do with it, because it's not like even if there were a correct driver online, that it would get added automatically to that Printer list among the 900+ driver files on my hard disk, would it? Anyway, my big takeaway from the Solution was that it might make a difference if a new printer instance were added from scratch, instead of what I did, namely trying different drivers for printers that seemed close to my HP LaserJet MFP successively in my same printer instance. So I tried creating a brand new printer instance and letting it auto-select a best guess, and it picked the General PCL Laser Printer (which I had tried earlier to no avail, but not as my first choice from scratch). Alas, printing still goes through all the motions, the status messages indicating a successful print job, but the job never made it to the printer, and with no error messages. (Mind you , it's connected to the printer, because the indicated idle/offline status matches the state of my printer, and the toner supply level display matches mine.) So I'm wondering whether I could grab somebody's HP LaserJet MFP M29w PPD and copy it to my printer drivers folder? I do recognize that it very well may not work, because I remember from the old days that sometimes, for example, a Leopard PPD wouldn't work for Snow Leopard, but another printer's PPD would work for both — it was a crap shoot.
10-28-2019 10:20 AM
I do not have an M29 handy but based on the specs it does not support PostScript as a printing language.
Therefore a PPD (PostScript Printer Description) will not work for you.
It does however support URF which is used by more current versions of AirPrint.
macOS 10.6 had the first incarnation of AirPrint on macOS so I am unsure of the level of support. A quick search did not help much.
My M26 does not even support URF/AirPrint so I can't test this for you. But AirPrint may be a possibility on the M29.
10-28-2019 05:50 PM - edited 10-28-2019 05:53 PM
Yeah, I've been a little loose in my language: I have 69 HP LaserJet "print driver" files alone among the some 900 in my Printers folder:
/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/
...and the HP and most others aren't, as you point out, strictly PostScript PPDs (but they resemble a PPD when you inspect them in a text editor). I guess my HP files are PCL files, if that's what HP still uses.... Anyway, can you put your hands on a stand-alone HP LaserJet MFP M29w "print driver" file and get it to me? Even though you say you don't have a M29, could you run your HP installer utility (which won't launch on my Snow Leopard) and install the print driver file on your computer? I don't see a way to attach files to a post here, so maybe a Dropbox link, or I can PM you my email address?... Like I said in the first post, it very well may not work on my Snow Leopard, but I'd sure like to put it in my Printers folder and give it a shot.... (By the way, according to Wikipedia, Apple AirPrint for Mac was introduced in macOS 10.7 Lion, so I reckon I'm out of luck. There are third-party utilities that let you use an old non-AirPrint printer with an AirPrint computer, such as Netgear Genie, but I can't find anything else that will let a non-AirPrint computer print to an AirPrint printer — which my M29 is explicitly advertised as AirPrint. Anyway, it seems all I need is this print driver to put in my Printers folder, because my Mac is definitely otherwise making a network connection with my M29.)