USB and Parallel Embossers on the Mac

This is preliminary documentation on how to set up a USB-to-parallel converter for use with some braille embossers on the Macintosh computer. This is a concern for older embossers that do not have a USB port. This description applies to most Enabling embossers manufactured before 2016 and all Freedom Scientific and Telesensory embossers.

Before starting the procedure to install a "printer driver" you must first connect a USB converter to your Macintosh. Nothing will happen that you will see, but the Mac OS will register the presence of the converter.

Now do the following:

1. Open the Apple menu and select System Preferences.

2. Select Printers & Scanners.

3. Click on Add Printer (the "+" sign).

4. You should now see a line item identifying your converter. Select it, and click Add.

5. At this point, select the Options & Suppliesbutton, then the "Driver" tab. In the drop-down list, select "Generic Post Script printer." Click OK.

6. If you want you can go back to the name field and change the name of the converter to more closely match that of your embosser.

7. Now click add again and you should get a message saying "setting up your device."

Once it is finished, you can close the dialog. Your computer will communicate with your embosser through the USB converter.

Now you can bring up DBT and follow the usual software configuration steps for your embosser. The full instructions for setting up a new embosser are covered in Global: Embosser Setup.