I decided that I wanted to print something today, and the last time that I did that I was at my old apartment, and my iMac was running Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. So, my first task was to find the printer and the appropriate cables, and get it hooked up to my new Airport Extreme base station. That done, my next task was to get the printer setup in Mac OS X Leopard.

Neither Tiger nor Leopard included drivers for the ML-1710 natively. Samsung does produce some drivers, but from what I was able to gather online they are a bit old, and I'm not sure if they are Intel-native or Leopard certified. I found that there is an open source driver called SpliX which works with the ML-1710. In order to get this driver working on Leopard, I had to:

1. Download and install the CUPS Driver Development Kit (DDK) 1.2.3. I just grabbed the .dmg file and installed it.
2. Download the SpliX driver source code (I got version 1.0.2).
3. Unpack the code, change to the directory, and type "make" (this assumes that you have the developer tools installed):

   intension-en1:~/src/splix-1.0.2$ make
   g++ -O2 `cups-config --cflags`  -I../include -Wall -g -O0   -c -o spl2.o spl2.cpp
   g++ -O2 `cups-config --cflags`  -I../include -Wall -g -O0   -c -o printer.o printer.cpp
   g++ -O2 `cups-config --cflags`  -I../include -Wall -g -O0   -c -o band.o band.cpp
   g++ -O2 `cups-config --cflags`  -I../include -Wall -g -O0   -c -o compress.o compress.cpp
   g++ -O2 `cups-config --cflags`  -I../include -Wall -g -O0   -c -o bandanalyser.o bandanalyser.cpp
   g++ -O2 `cups-config --cflags`  -I../include -Wall -g -O0   -c -o rastertospl2.o rastertospl2.cpp
   g++ -O2 `cups-config --cflags`  -I../include -Wall -g -O0   -c -o raster.o raster.cpp
   g++ `cups-config --ldflags` -lcups -lcupsimage -o rastertospl2 spl2.o printer.o band.o compress.o bandanalyser.o rastertospl2.o raster.o
   make[1]: Nothing to be done for `all'.
   

4. Assuming that this built without error, install the driver:

   intension-en1:~/src/splix-1.0.2$ sudo make install
   Password:
   install -m 755 -s rastertospl2 `cups-config --serverbin`/filter
   install -d -m 755 `cups-config --datadir`/model/samsung
   for filename in ml1510 ml1520 ml1610 ml1710 ml1740 ml1750 ml2010 ml2150 ml2250 ml2550 clp300 clp500 clp510 clp600 xerox-phaser6100; do \
   		install -m 644 $filename.ppd `cups-config --datadir`/model/samsung;\
   		for lang in fr it de; do \
   			install -m 644 $filename$lang.ppd `cups-config --datadir`/model/samsung;\
   		done; \
   	done \
   
   
                --- Everything is done! Have fun ---
   

At this point, I simply selected the ML-1710 printer on the list of Bonjour printers, and it was ready to go. Leopard appears to have an algorithm that matches printer drivers to found printers. Leopard was unable to find a driver for the ML-1710 when I tried to print to it at first, but after installing the driver, everything "just worked".

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Mac OS X, Open Source, Samsung, ML-1710, Leopard