PSM works in two different but related ways. First of all, it allows Mac OS users to print to any printer shared by your Windows 2000 PSM server. As far as the Macintosh users are concerned, any printer (regardless of its native capabilities) shared from your PSM server appears to be a 300 dots-per-inch PostScript level 1 printer. Handily, the PSM service also works in the reverse way: it allows you to capture an AppleTalk network printer so that Windows users can print to a queue on the Windows 2000 Server and have their jobs go to the AppleTalk printer—without putting AppleTalk on the clients themselves.
As was mentioned earlier, in the section "Setting Up File and Print Services," the best way to install PSM is to first install, configure, and test the AppleTalk protocol. Once you're confident that it's working properly, the next step is to create a user account for the PSM service. FSM doesn't need its own account, since permissions are already set on the files and folders it makes available to Macintosh users. However, to control printing you'll need to have a separate account to which you can assign permissions. Use the tools discussed in Chapter 9 to create a new user to be used exclusively with PSM and then follow these steps to configure the PSM service to use this account instead of the default LocalSystem credentials.
The first step in creating a printer to which Mac OS users can print is to create a shared printer, either by creating a new printer from scratch using the Add Printer Wizard (discussed in Chapter 8) or by sharing an existing printer.
If you want to share an existing printer that's already attached to your Windows 2000 server, just switch to the Sharing tab of its Properties window, select the Shared As option, and give the shared printer a name. If you're creating a new printer, the process is slightly more complicated.
Figure 22-13. The Select The Printer Port screen of the Add Printer Wizard.
TIP
As part of the configuration process, you can set restrictions on who can use the printer (with the Security tab of the printer's Properties window) or on when and how it can be used (with the Advanced tab).
Once you've taken these steps, the newly created shared printer will be available to Macintosh users as soon as the PSM service is stopped and restarted.
Capturing an AppleTalk printer has two side effects. The first is that Mac OS users can no longer print directly to the captured device—that's what capturing does. The second is that any user, Mac OS or Windows, of the PSM server will be able to print to the captured device, providing you've shared it. To capture an existing AppleTalk printer, you must first create a shared printer to represent it on the Windows 2000 Server by doing the following:
If you want to release a captured printer or recapture one that's been released, you can do so with the Ports tab of the printer's Properties window. Follow these steps to do so:
Remember, a captured device is available to Windows and Mac OS users who print only to the corresponding queue on your Windows 2000 PSM Server; an uncaptured or released AppleTalk printer is available only to clients that speak AppleTalk.