HP Laserjet 1020 on OSX 135

Posted by andy

We purchased a couple of dirt cheap LaserJet 1020 printers for the office and home. While they work fine in Windows and Ubuntu Linux (with proper hackery applied) getting it to work on OSX is not straight forward. If you google around you’ll find both success and horror stories on this printer. It seems HP supports the newer 1022 model officially but not the 1020. Turns out the 1022 driver will work fine for a 1020 if, and that’s a big IF, you get Mac OSX to list it in the printer list. This thread on macosxhints.com was the most informative of all. I tried the suggestions a couple of days ago but to no avail. This morning I tried again and with success! All the steps seem to be there, but the following order worked for me:

  1. Download; http://www.railsguru.com/assets/2007/4/16/1601_LJ_1022_Series_OSX.dmg;
  2. If you have anything for the HP 1020 in ”/Library/Reciepts” delete it.
  3. Delete anything for the HP 1020 in Printer in “Printer Setup Utility”
  4. Install the downloaded printer drivers
  5. Remove all files from /Library/Printers/hp/laserjet. Leave the 1020 subfolder! You’ll need the contents in the next step;
  6. Move all files from the 1020 subfolder to /Library/Printers/hp/laserjet (the parent);
  7. Restart Mac OSX, just for luck;
  8. Add new printer in “Printer Setup Utility”, select HP LaserJet 1020, driver should come up, click ADD

Disclaimer: this worked for me™. No guarantee the above steps will hose your printer setup or other things.

Moving on

Posted by andy

Yesterday was my last day at Noterik. I spend almost four years there, had loads of fun, learned a great deal and was able to work on some very cool projects. Good luck guys, it was excellent!

Today I start my new position at INBC. I’ll be doing all things technical there, oh and lots and lots of Ruby and Rails :-)