Canon IP5000 won't print from Word 5.1a in Classic

[Zack]

I'm having a weird problem with a Canon Pixma IP5000 printer which I
just purchased. It works fine with every program when my G4 is booted
into OS 10.3.3, and every program when it is booted into 9.2.2.
However, when I try to print from Word 5.1a while running classic, the
printer won't print text -- in response to the print command it just
spits out a blank page. If there is a graphic image embedded in the
word document, then it will print the graphic image. Additionally, it
'sees' page breaks, and if a text document is two pages long then it
will spit out two blank pages. If I boot into 9.2.2, then the printer
will print documents from Word 5.1a flawlessly.

Canon tech support is out of ideas; I've tried uninstalling and
reinstalling the Pixma drivers while booted into 9.2.2, I've rebuilt my
desktop, I've repaired permissions on my OSX drive, run Disk Warrior on
my the drive containing OS9 and Word 5.1, etc. For what it's worth,
I've found at least one other reference on the web to someone having
the exact same problem printing from Word 5.1a in Classic while using a
Canon Pixma printer, although it was a different model.

Does anyone have any other ideas? I dearly want to make this printer
work with my beloved Word 5.1!

Zack

 

[Jim Lange]

Zack,

I had a similar problem using a Canon i860. While I¹m no printer driver
expert, methinks there is a deep-seated conflict between the OS X driver and
the OS 9.x driver. What sometimes worked was to power down the printer for
about 30 seconds, unplug its USB cable, launch Classic, reconnect the USB,
power up the printer, and select it through the Chooser.

Bad enough that this workaround was hit or miss; the i860 would then refuse
to work in any OS X apps until it was re-reinitialized.

Sorry, no easy or reliable fix that I know of.

Jim

 

[Zack]

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, tried it twice and no joy. Again,
I don't have a general problem printing from Classic, it's specifically
printing from Word 5.1 in classic. This make me think that there's
something slightly non-standard about the way Word 5 interacts with
Classic, which wouldn't be that strange considering the age of the
program!

Zack

 

[Anybody]

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, tried it twice and no joy. Again,
I don't have a general problem printing from Classic, it's specifically
printing from Word 5.1 in classic. This make me think that there's
something slightly non-standard about the way Word 5 interacts with
Classic, which wouldn't be that strange considering the age of the
program!

The real problem is Classic istelf. It's a badly made hack that Apple
can't be bothered fixing. There's quite a few applications I've tried
which run fine in Mac OS 9.2, but either have problems or completely
fall over under "Classic". Various versions of Word are just one
example. :-(