“PrintJobMgr exited unexpectedly with code 105″!?!?!?

You’ve just setup a brand new network between your Windows and Macintosh computers and now want to print to a single printer that is either shared or directly on the network. Setting up the network was easy as pie. Installing the printer went smoothly and without a hitch. Then you try to print. The job turns for a few seconds then pops up this error.

At this point you’ve officially been screwed by a major corporation.

For some deep seated financial reason, Epson and HP do not like to make all their printers Network aware. They work great out of the box via USB printing. Unluckily a large number of their printers are not postscript compatible. The driver bypasses the CUPS printing daemon. Locally this is fine because the driver is providing the translation. But when you throw it on a network the driver either can’t communicate across TCP/IP, or if it does, the “server” doesn’t know how to process the raw data it is receiving.

Luckily for us, the Gutenprint project has created a nice OS X installer that includes support for a LOT of printers. There are still a large number of printers that aren’t support, mostly higher end ones such as HP plotters or the Epson Stylus Pro 4800. But for sharing consumer grade printers this is it.

Installing Gutenprint is incredibly easy. Download the .dmg, expand it, run the installer. On Tiger it installs the PPD files in the correct location so that when Printer Setup Utility is ran, it brings up an exhaustive list of possible printers. If you’re planning on putting a printer on a network and want to print to it via OSX, I highly suggest looking at this list before your purchase. The hours of hair pulling you save will be worth the the time.

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