If you’re a regular blog reader, go ahead and skip this post — it’s totally boring unless you’re trying to network a riso printer! :)

Figuring out how to set up my RISO duplicator (I have an MF9450 model) to print from my Mac was a little confusing in parts, so here are my notes — for my future self, and for you if you're needing help too.

Downloading and Installing the RISO drivers

You download the Drivers from riso.com/download.

For mine, I picked Series Category of Duplicator, and then MF Series for the Driver Type, and then it showed me my computer’s operating system (macOS 10.15) and had a button to click to download the files. (Or you could select the OS by hand if you wanted a different one.)

The files that downladed were actually just all of the available Duplicator model drivers for OS Catalina 10.15 — not just the MF series, but all the rest of the models. It also has a PDF of the Printer Driver Manual available, that is useful. (PrinterDriver_UsersGuide_MAC_ENG.pdf)

I went into the MF 9 Series folder of all the downloaded drivers and double clicked on MF 9x5xU Series Installer.app to run it.

If it asks for a serial number, you need the serial number of a driver, NOT the serial number of your RISO printer itself. (!!! THIS IS CONFUSING !!! It has nothing to do with the serial number that is physically on your riso machine!)

Some older drivers are free -- for mine, that cost $61. I ended up purchasing a physical CD from my local riso dealer to get the license -- this was full of outdated drivers that wouldn’t work on my computer BUT the case of the CD had the driver serial number, which I entered to make this work.

Again, from what I’ve read, some of the older models do not need a serial number. But if you're perplexed why typing in the serial number of your riso isn't working to install the printer driver -- that's because you're not supposed to do that. (Can you tell I wasted a lot of time and was very confused here?) You need a serial number/license for the driver itself.

Installing the Riso as a Printer on the computer

Once you've downloaded and installed the printer drivers, following the steps above, you're not done. You still need to add the RISO as a printer on your computer. Here's how:

  1. Open System Preferences
  2. Select Printers & Scanners
  3. Click the + icon in the lower left to bring up the dialog to add a new printer.
  4. Select Add Printer or Scanner, and the Add box will appear.
  5. Click the IP button. (We're going to add the Riso by its IP address.)
  6. Address: In the Admin section of the Riso, look up the IP address and fill that in here. For my machine, it's under the System tab, when I tap on the "Network Settings (IPv4)" button. It will be something like 10.1.0.1 or similar format.
  7. Protocol: Line Printer Daemon - LPD
  8. Queue: hold (Make sure that hold is entered in lowercase.)
  9. Name: RISO (This is what shows up in your list of printers -- you can name it whatever you like.)
  10. Location: Optional to fill in. (This is a hint for the physical location of the printer if it's being used in a school or office with many printers.)
  11. Use (dropdown menu): Change from Generic Postscript Printer to Select Software which will open the Printer Software dialog. (Screenshot below.) Type Riso into the search filter, and select the driver you just installed. Eg, for mine it is Riso MF 9x5xU Series. Hit OK.
  12. Hit Add to complete the process.

Now your RISO printer should appear in the Printer: dropdown in the system print dialog. Try it out! (See my notes on how to print using the RISO mac driver.)

References for installation

In figuring that out, I found these two tutorials most helpful:

  1. How to install the Riso ~Possibly no longer available?
  2. Stencil Wiki on printing directly from Mac OS

Riso Printer Driver install notes

Some things that might not be obvious from the Printer Driver Manual (and these are for my model — yours might be different, esp. if it doesn’t have built in networking):

  • The RISO needs to be physically connected to the computer or the internet router/network. I did this via a LAN Cat-5 cable. Our network is a small router + an Apple AirPort, and I plugged in the cable into the ethernet port on the back of the AirPort. That allowed the RISO printer to be seen by any computer on the wifi network.
  • It seemed like I needed to see the RISO printer on the network to get the IP address for setting up the printer driver the first time. After adding the printer initially, my computer can see the printer in the list of options even if it is turned off.
  • I’ll be very careful before updating to another major version of Mac OS past Catalina until making sure riso drivers are updated and available to download. RISO took almost a year to make the drivers for Catalina available - the OS came out in early October 2019, and the updated drivers took until the beginning of August 2020 to arrive. In the meantime, there were no drivers that would work for printing from that OS.

What if my RISO printer says "the printer is in use"

Ok, so after I've installed the driver, occasionally sometimes it will say "spooling job" and then switch to say "the printer is in use" when the printer is not in use. And then the RISO will just not make a new master stencil to print. Confusing when it really doesn't respond! I removed the printer in System Preferences, and then re-installed the printer (using the instructions above) and that fixed it. Here's how to remove the printer:

Both times it happened, seems like the issue is that the IP address that the RISO shows in the Admin panel itself had changed. I'll update here if I figure out more, but that does seem to fix it if nothing else does. There's probably a better way, let me know if you know it!