ALPS MicroDry Printers with Apple Macintosh Operating Systems, and SCSI Interfaces

Summary regarding ALPS printers and Macintosh operating systems: System 7, MacOS8, MacOS9, and MacOSX. Also information on the SCSI interface: this is useful to linux users who may be using a SCSI port on their computer to connect the printer.

Requisite drivers are available from the ALPS Yahoo Groups, which are also the best place to find support for questions regarding installation, trouble-shooting, and compatibility. See the driver page on this site for information on available drivers.

Note: Yahoo Groups become defunct from December 2019, information on new forum locations to be posted late-November 2019.

Supported Apple Macintosh Operating Systems and Architectures

Apple has produced a variety of computers on different hardware platforms (architectures), and with varying operating systems from System 7, through MacOS8, MacOS9 and MacOSX running on subsets of these hardware platforms.

Mac OS 7.6.1–9.2.2

Recommended versions of Apple Macintosh System 7, MacOS8, MacOS9 are detailed in the driver page.

Appropriate Printer Driver/Software:
Macintosh Printer Driver v.6.46. This is the latest version, though earlier versions should work for many situations.
Micro Dry(R) RIP 2.0.2J Updater (for Japanese models; I am not certain what the situation is for international models).
Supported Printer Models:
MD-2000S/2010S/2300S/4000S/1000/1300/1500
MD-5000/5000P/5000i/5000iX
MD-5500/5500P
Appropriate Scanner Driver/Software:
Macintosh Scanner Driver v.3.0, CopyStudio v.3.02.
Supported Printer Models:
MD-4000S/1500
Macintosh Scanner User Manual:
MD-4000S/1500

Mac OSX 10.1–10.4.11

Only PowerPC processors are supported, there is no (direct) support for Intel-based Macintosh hardware.

More details on support for Apple MacOSX are detailed in the driver page.

Appropriate Printer Driver:
Mac OS X Printer Driver v.1.0.2. This is the latest version, though earlier versions should work for many situations.
Supported Printer Models:
MD-1000/1300/1500 (+ parallel-to-USB converter cable)
MD-5000/5000P/5000i/5000iX (+ parallel-to-USB converter cable)
MD-5500/5500P
Mac OS X Printer User Manual:
for all models above.

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SCSI DIP Switches

The SCSI interface printers of the MD-2xxx and MD-4xxx families have a set of DIP switches to set the SCSI device ID of the daisy chain of SCSI devices connected to a SCSI host controller (usually inside the computer, on-board, or on the additional SCSI card).

Legend

OFF: upper position
ON: lower position

Numbering

Numbers 1–4 represent the DIP switches from left to right.

Switch Settings

The following Table summarizes the settings of the DIP switches needed for each SCSI device number:

**SCSI DIP Switches**
The 4 DIP switches set the SCSI device ID of the ALPS printer.
(*) SCSI device number 7 is reserved for the Macintosh itself.
Device number 0 is normally assigned to the internal hard drive, if here is one. To be safe, use only device numbers 1 through 6.
1	2	3	4	SCSI Device Number
OFF	OFF	OFF	OFF	No. 0
ON	OFF	OFF	OFF	No. 1
OFF	ON	OFF	OFF	No. 2
ON	ON	OFF	OFF	No. 3
OFF	OFF	ON	OFF	No. 4
ON	OFF	ON	OFF	No. 5
OFF	ON	ON	OFF	No. 6 (Factory default)
ON	ON	ON	OFF	No. 7 (*)

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References

English language drivers are available from the the Groups.io ALPS Group. The official ALPS driver page in Japanese is given for reference.

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