which jetdirect?

[erikv11]

I picked up a nicely working, little-used laserjet 4M+ and I want to put it on my University's ethernet. So ideally want the printer easily accessed by various machines and OS's (PC and Mac for sure). There is a hole in the back of the printer where the jetdirect card shold be - I think the previous owner kept the card.

I was bewildered by all the jetdirect options on eBay. Seems like I want a card but not even sure that is necessary - saw external servers that hook to the 4M+ by serial. Would prefer to keep it cheap, given the age of the printer.

Which product do you recommend? Are the newer products going to work in this printer? Are the older ones going to be easy to install and configure?

Thanks for any help.

 

[DaveGoTech]

I think the HP option for jetdirect was #J2550. This makes a clean installation by plugging into the option slot. It does require each user to install the jet direct drivers on thier machine however. As for external print server, they work on nearly all printers by connecting to the parallel port. Dlink and Linksys are typical vendors. Usually, you install administrative software on 1 machine, then other workstations are able to connect without additional software. Regardless of which way you go, spending up to $100 should not be a concern as the the HP 4 series are excellent printers and will last virtually forever (with normal maintenance).