[sf-lug] network laser printer

[Alex Kleider]

Follow up on the printer:
Following the protocol recommended (and actually carried out) by Rick, I decided upon an HP Laserjet 4100N offered on Craigs List for $50.
It was sold to me by a nice Russian guy called Paul, who swaps out hardware for large companies and he has a ware house full of printers (lots more of these as well.) His contact info is 650-996-5829, vitalxs at gmail.com. His place is in Mountain View just off 101 at the hwy85/Shoreline exit.
The printer is now up and running 'serving' my network. 

{One small thing that I learned: for the network (tcp/ip) configuration options to appear on the EIO configuration menu, the printer has to be already connected to the network during power up. The options didn't show up after my first power up because I hadn't plugged in my ethernet cable until afterwards. A power cycle solved the problem.
I have been assuming that a print server must have a fixed IP but now I'm not so sure. This one has a DHCP client (which I disabled) but I'm now beginning to think that CUPS can 'find' it's printer by means other than knowing its IP address (part of the IPP protocol probably.)}


This seems like a pretty good deal so I thought I'd share the experience with the list.



--- On Fri, 5/7/10, Akkana Peck <akkana at shallowsky.com> wrote:

> From: Akkana Peck <akkana at shallowsky.com>
> Subject: Re: [sf-lug] network laser printer
> To: sf-lug at linuxmafia.com
> Date: Friday, May 7, 2010, 8:54 PM
> Alex Kleider writes:
> > The Brother HL-2070n and the currently available
> HL-2070w, the one
> > I'm leaning towards, aren't listed but Brother in
> general seems to
> > have a very good reputation in the Linux community. I
> followed
> 
> We have a Brother 2070N and it works great.  CUPS sees
> it and
> autoconfigures it, no additional work required. It's also
> incredibly
> stingy on ink -- I think it took two years for the initial
> starter
> cartridge (which is nowhere near full) to run out. I think
> ours is
> about three years old now, and it's starting to have some
> feed
> problems -- sometimes the first page after the printer is
> powered
> on gets stuck or won't feed properly and we have to fish it
> out and
> try again. That's too bad but seems to be par for the
> course with
> cheap home printers -- my HP inkjet does the same thing,
> and it's a
> lot newer than the Brother.
> 
> I'm surprised the 2070N doesn't google better -- I've
> posted about
> it on SVLUG, and seen other people post praise for it too.
> 
>     ...Akkana
> 
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