Minolta PagePro 1350W with OS X 10.4 (Tiger)

These instructions are somewhat out of date, though I get a handful of hits everyday to this page. If you would like to contribute updated instructions, or have a page with updated instructions, please send me an email.

My printer didn't want to cooperate with my Mac that I got it about three months ago, so I finally sat down to figure out how to get everything working.

Here's how I got it to work, so that no one else has to waste as much time as I did.

  1. Install the foomatic-RIP and ESP Ghostscript packages for OS X
  2. Assuming you have XCode installed with its fun GNU tools, follow steps 2 and 3 on this post from the LinuxPrinting Minolta mailing list. It's copied here just in case:

To install a Minolta PagePro 1350W on Mac OS 10.3.8:

1)  PREPARE THE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT

If you've never installed the development tools (Xcode), install them as you
will need the compiler(gcc).  The version of autoconf and automake are not
current enough for the min12xxw driver, though, so you need to compile new
versions of those packages.  Here are the links:

[http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/]
[http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/]

You need to build the new autoconf before automake.

The build process is similar for both, and will also be the same for min12xxw:

tar zxf <downloaded file>
cd <new directory>
./configure
make
make install

In both instances, the new files are installed into /usr/local/bin/, which
isn't in the path by default, so first, add it to the path
(PATH="$PATH:/usr/local/bin"), and then rename all of the files in /usr/bin/
that have new versions in /usr/local/bin/.  As soon as you type 'make install',
you will see which files were created by that build, and those are the ones
that need to be renamed.  If you don't rename them(or delete them), the build
process for minn12xxw will see the old versions before the new ones of the same
name since /usr/bin/ occurs before /usr/local/bin/ in the path.

2)  BUILD MIN12XXW

Get the driver here:

[http://www.hinterbergen.de/mala/min12xxw/]

Using the build process outlined in the above step, this should happen without
flaw.  The driver will be installed to /usr/local/bin/.

You also need to get the PPD file for the printer.  Do so here:

[http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_driver.cgi?driver=min12xxw]

Place the PPD in this folder:

/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/en.lproj

3)  INSTALL PRINTER

First, restart the CUPS system with this command - 'killall -HUP cupsd'.  Next
open the Printer Setup Utility (in /Applications/Utilities).  Since the os
cannot directly recognize the driver, you have add the printer with the
advanced option.  Do this by holding down the option key, and clicking Add in
the Printer Setup Utility.  When the new widow opens, select Advanced from the
very first popup menu (the one that selects the connection method).  In the
Device popup menu, look for your printer--should be at the bottom of the menu. 
When you select your printer (mine was called PP1350W), the Device Name &
Device URI fields are filled in for you.  On the Printer Model popup menu,
select Minolta, and when you do so, the PPD you installed should appear below. 
Be sure it's selected, and click add.

Your printer should now work!  By substituting another PPD, these instructions
should work for the other printers that use this driver.



Thomas Kho <tom@tkho.net>
Last Updated: November 4, 2005