| 22 Apr 2024 |
 effendy | A friend of mine bought himself a new Macbook Pro (arm) and has a printer Epson Stylus Photo PX730WD which worked flawlessly on his old Intel-based one.
On the Epson website the only driver that I can download for mac is from 2011 and it's, of course, incompatible with the newer laptops/OS.
Is there some way you could go around this, install some generic driver or maybe a driver for a newer model that is compatible with this one too? How do you normally go about solving this? A new printer is cheap, but he understandably really doesn't want to throw it away and buy a new one. | 14:20:38 |
 name_missing | If he still has the old laptop, then it could be used as print server.
| 14:21:54 |
| name_missing | This would be the only solution i know which does not involve buying new stuff. | 14:22:14 |
| name_missing | Ive been playing with using a RPI as a print server.
Had the same problem with drivers.
So for now i just use an old laptop. | 14:24:16 |
 iam_tj | effendy: usually modern CUPS expects driver-less printing, due to printers supporting IPP (Internet Printing Protocol) | 14:27:27 |
| iam_tj | Network printers generally advertise themselves via multicast-DNS; there is also a USB IPP interface | 14:28:25 |
| effendy | iam_tj: I'm guessing that would mean that sticking the usb cable into the laptop should normally be enough if there is support for IPP, right? | 14:34:53 |
| effendy | ah, actually no, 'cause IPP is over the network :) | 14:35:17 |
| iam_tj | I'm not familiar with CUPs on Macs themselves - in linux with OpenPrinting we have usb-ipp daemon | 14:36:31 |
| iam_tj | see https://github.com/OpenPrinting/ipp-usb | 14:36:53 |
| effendy | I see there's also a network interface for the printer actually. So that part shouldn't be an issue. | 14:37:06 |
| effendy | (meaning the choice is there) | 14:37:19 |
| effendy | * I see there's also a network interface (rj-45) for the printer actually. So that part shouldn't be an issue. | 14:37:30 |
| iam_tj | Yes, Ethernet is possibly easier (assuming the printer does support IPP - one thing to note is although a printer supports IPP, it may not (especially if old) advertise itself using multicast-DNS and therefore not be automatically discoverable - in that case one has to configure the connection manually in the CUPS web admin interface via Add Printer ( http://localhost:631 ) | 14:39:57 |
| effendy | I see. | 14:40:42 |
| effendy | In reply to @iam_tj:matrix.org
see https://github.com/OpenPrinting/ipp-usb this is only Linux only though, yeah, so it wouldn't really help. | 14:40:58 |
| iam_tj | There may be something similar for Mac ? | 14:41:23 |
| effendy | I see there's apple/cups on github. | 14:42:06 |
| effendy | Now I need to find out if the printer supports it. I can't test it directly, I have to give remote instructions and, as I said, he's not very technical. | 14:43:12 |
| iam_tj | "The IPP-over-USB standard was ratified by the USB forum in 2012. As of 2014 Mac OS X implemented this standard and with the addition of ippusbxd Linux shall as well." - https://github.com/OpenPrinting/ippusbxd | 14:44:05 |
|  @sealsrock:matrix.org left the room. | 14:46:21 |
| effendy | Do you think a printer from 2011 would normally support it? | 14:47:14 |
| effendy | I mean IPP in general. | 14:47:19 |
| iam_tj | I have a Samsung laser from around 2007 that does; the only thing it forgot to do is actually listen on the IPv6 address it advertises over multicast-DNS! | 14:48:11 |
| effendy | So you'd suggest connecting the printer to the LAN in any case. | 14:49:00 |
| effendy | At least I would remove a layer of complexity. | 14:49:21 |
| iam_tj | Yes, if it is convenient | 14:49:57 |
| effendy | So the Mac would normally just identify the printer and install it, I guess, right? I mean, this is my experience with Mac normally, but with modern printers connected over the LAN. | 14:53:28 |
| effendy | I mean, I should probably not expect having to install anything else. | 14:53:58 |
| iam_tj | Hopefully yes | 14:57:34 |
