Printing in Classic

The Classic environment uses the Mac OS X printing architecture. All the printers you have created in Printer Setup Utility are automatically available in Classic without other configuration. For this reason, you should only set up printers in the Classic Chooser if you need Mac OS 9specific printing features. Also, any printers you configure in Classic will not be available in Mac OS X, so you should do most of your printer configuration in Mac OS X.

If your printer manufacturer does not make a Mac OS X printer driver, or if their driver requires Mac OS 9 for installation but your computer cannot boot Mac OS 9, you have two options available. You can use a Gimp-Print driver to configure that printer in Mac OS X, or you can try a configuration file for a similar printer. You could also drag the print driver to /System Folder/Extensions, as you would in Mac OS 9.

You can install a Mac OS 9 PostScript Printer Description file (PPD) in Mac OS X. Most printer manufacturers include an installer to place the PPD in the correct location for Mac OS X. However, in some cases you might have to decompress or install the PPD in Classic, then manually copy the PPD files from /System Folder/Extensions/Printer Descriptions to /Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/en.lproj.