how to make printer wireless

[bway116]

Hi, probably a too-easy question, but if someone would help me I'd appreciated.

As a consequence of re-arranging furnitures in my apartment, the printer is nowhere near the Airport Extreme Base Station anymore, which was closer and I used to connect them with an USB cord to print wirelessly from the laptop.

What are the steps I can take now to make the printer wirelessly connected to the Airport Extreme and I to print wirelessly from my laptop? I can't really move the printer to near the Airport in its new location, nor do I have a USB cable to go two rooms across.

Should I buy the Airport Express just for the purpose of printing wirelessly? Or are there other wireless printer adapter options available that I can incorporate with the Airport Extreme router I have now?

By the way, the printer is a regular color laser, not network ready or anything like that.

Thanks so much.

 

[gsahli]

We may be able to help, but really need the printer model (a lot of issues with drivers). Airport Express/Extreme have built-in software that allow USB printers to be used just as if shared from another Mac - but we (you) have to do it another way.

(in fact, one way you should consider is getting an Airport Express - you already know the Extreme/Express way works.)

 

[MTI]

There are standalone wireless USB printservers. Plug the printer's USB cable into the device, power the device and it provides wifi access to the printer. Be aware that most "all in one" print, copy, fax type printers aren't compatible with most of these devices.

 

[bway116]

it's a samsung clp-300. it's not multifunctional, only a color laser printer, and not network-ready.

how does it work..with a 3rd party standalone wireless USB printservers, do I need to attach a receiver on the back of the Airport Extreme usb slot also? so it knows to use that router...?

I just hope it would know to print

 

[MTI]

http://compnetworking.about.com/od/wireless/ss/wirelessgear_4.htm

 

[gsahli]

Thanks for giving us the model number.
It's important to know that network printing from OS X to any non-postscript printer requires a driver that a) was written by the manufacturer for the type of network printing you want (they nearly all still use old-school "Carbon" drivers), or b) is a "modern" CUPS driver that is capable of working with the built-in network protocols provided by CUPS in OS X.

It will be worth a try to download and try the Samsung 300N model's driver (or maybe the one you have installed is the same) to see if it will work with a print server that uses standard protocols.

If it doesn't work, get the driver foo2qpdl from:
http://www.openprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Samsung-CLP-300
http://foo2qpdl.rkkda.com/

That also requires you to install foomatic and ghostscript from here:
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting/macosx/foomatic

Unless it says Windows-only, you can use nearly any print server - they all use "standard" communication protocols.

Come back with more questions when you've got the driver and the print server.

 

[bway116]

Hi, so finally I settle in with the choice of getting an Airport Express, just making it all unified Apple products . (Sorry, by the way, it's a Time Capsule that I have now as the main wireless router base, the Airport Express is just for transmitting to the printer.)

It was rather difficult to mix Airport Express with Time Capsule, but after some trial and error, I chose for the Airport Express to 'Join a wireless network' (instead of 'Participate in a WDS network'), and I somehow got the printer to deliver a printout woohoo!

Then today I tried to print again after a few days of not using it. The printer keeps getting paused, and after trying to unpause it from the job window, I got the message:

Attempting to connect to host KobeWirelessExpress.local. on port 10000
Unable to connect to printer; will retry in 30 seconds...

In the airport utility, both Time Capsule and Airport Express are in green lights, so I'm not sure where the communication has a glitch. I'm wondering if anyone has suggestion what I should do?

 

[johnlwadsworth]

I am trying the same setup, but have not been able to get it to work.

So, you got this setup to work? How?

I got this to work by adding my "networked" printer in the Print and Fax settings in System Preferences. My error was that when i checked this I already saw my printer in the left hand pane of the Print and Fax Settings. I still needed to add my printer in order for time capsule to used the newly networked printer.