h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

SOS to techies...

I'm looking for techie help to telnet into my printer.

I'm trying to set up my Apple Laserwriter 8500 on a new router (DI-524). The printer worked fine wirelessly when plugged into my previous router (Netgear), but the D-link doesn't recognise it and seems not to accept AppleTalk.

I've been online to the Apple Support forums, and so far I've discovered that I need to set the printer up as an IPP location instead of an AppleTalk one. For this I need to have the printer's IP address, and since it's currently set to 0.0.0.0 I need to change it. I can't use the Apple Printer Utility (no Classic mode as I'm on 10.5.6) so I need to do this using Telnet.

I was directed to this thread http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8994445 and I downloaded the manual and started at page 103 as instructed. But I can't get very far. Using the application Terminal I typed in the printer name, but instead of being welcomed to the "TCP/IP Printer Configuration Utility" as the manual says, I get

<>

And if I type '1' or '2' as I would if I were in the TCP/IP Utility (according to the manual), all I get are error messages.

That's a long explanation, but maybe someone has a suggestion?

Thanks,

gj
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PS, not sure if this is in the right place, but it's meant to be in The Orchard...

Hi gj

Not sure how much I can help but here goes...

Have you still got the old Netgear router? If so then connect to the printer through it and see if you can set an IP address for the printer that way. Make a note of it and then connect via the D-Link.

Are you sharing the printer over your network? If so can you set a wired connection to the printer from one Mac and switch printer sharing on in the Sharing Preferences. This worked fine for me with 2 Macs talking to each other through the router and one printing through the other.

t.

Two days earlier and I would still have had the Netgear, dammit, but no, it's gone now.

Nice idea, but the printer is the only thing to be wired and so it has to connect to the router. Both computers (laptops, one Mac and one PC) will access the printer wirelessly.

I tried installing Apple Laserwriter Utility onto the PC upstairs, but when I tried to configure any settings (not just the IP address) it just froze - so no luck there.

I'm going back to Netgear. Will tell them it's not compatible and has to be returned...

Thanks for your suggestions!

gj
x

Ooh this is a tough one. You see, the IP address is like a phone number, it's how you connect to the printer via telnet, and since you don't have a valid one in the printer, you can't use telnet to connect to it in order to set it. Catch-22, or chicken and egg, or catch a chicken, 22 eggs, etc.

But I'm just going to take a wild guess and say that you're going about it all wrong. You *don't* want to change the IP address on the printer at all - what you want to do is set up the "DHCP" ability of your D-Link router (assuming it has that), and let *that* set the IP address of the printer (the printer understands "BOOTP" which is essentially an older version of "DHCP", basically it means that when you turn the printer on it looks for something to give it an IP address). Usually what you do is find the "MAC" number of the printer, and put that into the D-Link's DHCP settings area with the IP address that you want the printer to have. Then turn the printer off and on again. If you don't assign an address using the MAC number, then it assigns one randomly and that might be good enough.

Should work. But these things can get confusing, so you may need to try a couple dozen times.

Hi gj

I see what your problem might be in that case. You don't want one laptop connected to a printer.

I have to say that when I got a new printer recently I connected it to the network via my Netgear Modem/Router and it just worked with no problems. Going back to Netgear might be the easiest solution.

t.

Thank d'Elaphant but when I look at teh DHCP settings the printer isn't showing up at all.

gj
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