No Printer in Print Center

[Sarah Raleigh]

Hello,
My connection to my HP Laserjet 2100 M keeps going down, whenever our house has a power outage. Then I can't get the connection to come back up again... I need a set of steps to try every time this happens. Unfortunately the first time this happened I called HP and they helped me through it and it worked, but I didn't write down the steps. Then the next time it happened I called HP (each time it costs $25) and got someone who obviously really didn't know what was going on and was no help at all... but after I unplugged and plugged in the connection, the printer started working again. But this time... I can't seem get it to work. The printer just doesn't show up in the Print Center window. I tried reinstalling the printer driver, unplugging and plugging all the connections, restarting, etc etc and nothing works. I have a Mac dual processor G4 and am running system 10.2.3. Any ideas?

[Sarah Raleigh]

I forgot to mention, my HP Laserjet 2100M postscript laser printer is connected via serial port to Farallon phone net connector, to Asante Talk box, to ethernet port in the back of my computer.

[kps]

What do you see when you click this:

http://127.0.0.1:631/printers

Does your printer show up? Is it running or does the second button say "Start Printer"?

That's OS X's CUPS interface, configure your printer here if it is recognized by the system. If it does not show up, the problem may be with the connection you described...serial-->phonenet-->"TalkBox"-->eth...which I don't know much about.

[Sarah Raleigh]

Thanks, kps:
what is that "address" you sent? It shows my printers... how does it do that???

Since I wrote the last message I talked with a computer tech support guy who told me how to get the ethernet connection up and running again. I needed to shut down my computer AND printer (I had only shut down the printer before), then unplug the Asante Talk box and the router, wait 30 secs, then replug in, then turn everything on again. Then do something in the computer not related to printing, then restart again. Well, it worked. Don't ask me why, but it did.

Thanks for responding. What is that internet address you sent, anyway? I'm very interested....

Sarah

[kps]

It's CUPS (Common Unix Printing System). Jaguar has CUPS built in and you access it through your browser...cool eh?

127.0.0.1 is a local (internal) address called the loopback, 631 is the CUPS port. That's how you access the configuration screens.

To find out more, read all about it (including its history) in the Help section.

[Paddy]

I'm not sure what role the TalkBox might play in all this, but I do know that as a friend of mine says, occasionally, routers "lose their minds" and require the shutdown, 30 second wait and restart. Not sure if you really need to restart everything else - you might start with the router next time. Mine, for no particular reason decided to ignore my Powerbook about a month ago. I'd had a power outage too - and was very worried that my Airport card AND my ethernet had been fried. Nope - the router had simply "lost its mind" - gotten stuck on some setting or other that didn't include my Powerbook. (everything else worked, which was why I didn't suspect the router at first).

Glad to hear that you got it all working again!

I finally managed to get my Powerbook (running Jaguar) to connect to both my printers through the HP print server - after reading this I decided to have another go at it. At first, I tried everything and couldn't connect to my LaserJet 2100. Then, out of the blue, the Laserjet appeared on the list of options when I held down the option key and clicked on "advanced". This was after about 10 tries - doing the same thing. Where the heck was it before that? Asleep? Beats me. The DeskJet I was able to add via LPR/LPD using the CUPS driver - it worked first time out.  

Meanwhile, I think I'll keep the Sawtooth connected via USB to the Deskjet - I want the option of using the HP driver, which so far, I haven't been able to figure out how to get to work on the Powerbook. Project for another day!