Having lived through this process, I think it really applies to any / all strange printers for which a driver is found at the page below,
If you have a .ppd or .pet file, you should probably go to this page instead: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=29208
1. The page gives the drivers but calls for user to issue commands, compile, create queue, etc according to instructions for a number of distros but not Puppy, Also no instructions for setting it on a home network. Do NOT despair, i, noooobie, will guide you - the blind leading the blind
bring up your printer page here, then download driver per his instructions, save to mnt/home
http://foo2hiperc.rkkda.com/
THere's a forum for the driver but since they're not familiar with puppy, I put a note there per further down
http://foo2zjs.rkkda.com/forum/list.php?52
The forum index gives a complete list of printers he has drivers for
They give some support for ubuntu, redHat, Fedora, Mandrake, Suse.
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When you get well and truly stuck, the folks here got me going again, especially elraven. But ya have to try first, take heart, it actually seems to be difficult to do any harm to your system with this stuff, so just plonk away, going through the steps one at a time. Take a break between each step.
http://puppylinux.asia/tpp/bugs/1_Helpful_Stuff.html
if accosted by signin, just go to first part of url, click on tpp button
why does it take me a few months to stumble on this helpful site?
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There are other links trying to accomplish the same thing that i used so i'll just link to them rather than repeating everything here. Treat the below as a draft as i can't remember everything, ill edit when i redo it on the other pc.
2. download & install and use devx compiler
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 28c03ea881
and less useful
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=22701
* find link, download the devx file having the same number as your puppy version. For puppy412, devx_400 will work but you have to rename it to devx_412.sfs at some point before it will work
see wha i mean, things are not as bad as they look. * download it to /mnt/home. I struggled with where to put it, possibly in /root or other places. I ended concluding it probably doesn't matter. It will extract to the proper place.
* click on it, the archiver (like WinZip) will go to work. You select all files first. or if a pet file, will self extract.
* 'wrapper' suggest a directory - accept it. Wrapper exited with an error, i ignored it.
* open a console [in tthe proper directory? not sure, can't remember], right click, choose window, choose - open terminal here
* type gcc, if it says gcc:no input files, you did it right, you are ready to compile
3.http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 30&t=20147
compiling, etc.
this thread is about installing, compiling, getting. Look for antonio's posts to get an idea of the steps involved
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 30&t=20147
First, get the printer driver from the site above, something like foo2zjs.tar.gz and save to mnt/home. Click on it to extract, it will find or make the proper directories, ie /initrd/mnt/dev_sav/foo2zjs.
4. After compiling, this thread has useful stuff including how to solve the lp problem
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=33057
5. Do the getweb thing. Here is my discussion with rick, he posts the actual commands that got the getweb working at
http://foo2zjs.rkkda.com/forum/read.php?52,1815
i added some notes to clarify for newbies
6. this thread is how to get CUPS working after all the other installing is done.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 406#280406
or was it here? i think this next site had the better method, look for post by rcrsn51
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 19322d8b92
* The thing to realize about the cups wizard is you prbably can't wreck it. Some fields are confusing and now i can't remember whether the location field wanted the url or the name of the desk the printer is on!!
* You cant go back, just keep going to 'Printers' at the top to bring up the master page and try again.
* when you do something right you'll know it, don't change it, if wrong, it likely won't 'take'.
* you'll prolly want to delete the initial default printer, just confused me.
7. I got stuck on the last of rcrsn51's instructions, the printer name thing. Finally found thread that used an alternate "socket" route to get the printer working which finally did the trick for me as you will see!!
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 525#280525
That's it for now, i'll edit after i've had to do this again for the other pc
Note that there's no color (yet) but for me, puppy is utilitarian / fast/ fun os. Win98 stays on the hd for special needs until puppy is ready to deliver. Greyscale is good enough at this point.
PS. I finally got the 2nd pc good to print - here's how, quite unusual.
I was desperate to save the printer friendly setup but had trouble just saving the pup_save file to the CD burner due to its large size (larger than ram). In fact i broke pburn in the attempt. However then i used the setup/'remaster puppy live cd' option in the menu to create a new llive cd that included the printer setup. That worked after a few worrisome tries and messages that confused me in the difference between a live CD and an iso file. I used the live cd option. Anyway it rran, that was all i cared. THEN, i got the idea to try the live cd in the 2nd pc (Dell) and despite saying it would not work in other pc's it did work. Now that it is safe on a cd, and the Dell can be used with its own pup_save file, i can now see if it can be upgraded to 4.2 without disturbing the printer setup. I'll report back on how this goes.