Unsupported HP Printer Drivers & Duplex Printing

Barry Breen - 01:31pm Nov 20, 2009 PST
Guest User

As many have found out, HP dropped printer driver support for some printers over five years old. My trusty HP990Cse was one of those. The generic Gutenprint driver supplied by Apple for that printer only supports basic printing (does not support duplex/2-sided printing). In searching the internet, I found a workaround. For this printer (and perhaps many more), use the Deskjet 9800 printer driver which is available from Apple. You'll have to get use to a slightly different print window, but it should be no problem:

To Use a 990 Deskjet Printer in Duplex (2 Sided) in OS 10.6 (and maybe many others)--

Either load all the drivers from the installation disc or go to the following Apple web site and download all drivers for OS 10.6 (posted in a prior Tidbits article):

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/macosx_updates/macosxv1061update.html

After you install them, go to System Prefs and select the Print & Fax pane. Click on your printer then click Options & Supplies. Select Driver. Then under the pull down menu "print using" select printing software and find the Deskjet 9800 printer driver. Also, check the box for duplex printing, and select "Tri-Color, Black" as the ink cartridge. One thing I noticed is that in Page Setup for some documents the paper size indicates "US Letter Banner" instead of "US Letter". If this is the case, just select "US Letter" under the menu selection (otherwise the printer might not eject the sheet of paper all the way).

You should now have duplex capability......