sharing usb printer

[jonathan at jonmasters.org (Jon Masters)]

On Mon, 2006-09-04 at 18:39 -0400, Stephen Adler wrote:

> So I was wondering, if I got a usb hub, and a couple of more USB cables,
> could I plug the printer into the hub, and the two PC's into the same hub,
> and have independent access to the printer?

I've never tried that, but I don't see how the machines would correctly
enumerate that USB bus - I don't see how it would work. I've only ever
had one host on a USB hub and to the best of my knowledge, that's all
you can have anyway. Does anyone /know/ differently?

I've found Samba very low maintanance for printing, but I understand not
wanting to get into an IT support situation :-)

> The other possibility is to get a network print server box, which I'm 
> sure would do the trick as well.

They're cheap here in the UK, probably much cheaper in Be
$tbuy/CompUSA/somewhere slightly nicer than those. You can usually just
talk Unix LPR directly to the print server and not have hassles - though
I admit that I've never setup a USB one (only old school parallel).

Jon.



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