Printer on Airport Express sometimes idle

J

jonnyski

Registered
Hello:
I searched several times, but couldn't find this issue anwhere. I have an iMac G5 with OSX 10.4.8, Airport onboard to Airport Extreme router with HP9800 printer attached to USB print server connection of AE router. During normal operation, both the G5, and my wife's iBookG4 can print to the HP no problem. But occasionally, we both (not necessarily at the same time) will get the printer with exclamation point, and the print dialog says the job is stopped, with Printer Idle listed. By simply unplugging the USB cable from the printer into the AE router, waiting a few seconds, and then plugging it back in, the job can be started again, and it will print fine.

This is a tad frustrating, since I have to get up and go to another room to do this. I've gone all through the AE admin utility, and can't find any setting that seems like it would affect this.

Any ideas why this is happening? Computer sleeping or not doesn't seem to matter.
THanks,
Jon:confused:
 
I must say thats intresting.

First thing I'd do is replace the USB cable

If that doesn't fix the problem then your next thing to do is to find out whether its the printer or the print server. How you can find this out is by restarting the print server the next time this happens, if it fixes the problem, then you know its the print server. If it doesn't imediatly fix the issue, then restart the printer. And see if that fixes it
 
Hi!
Thanks for responding, I've been out of town for a while. Good idea on the cable; I got a cheap one on ebaY for this, I'll try that first. What did you mean by resetting the print server? I looked in the Airport Admin Utility and the Printer Setup Utility and didn't see any place to initiate a print server reset. Can you be more specific in your suggestion (I'm a relatively new Mac user, only had both Macs for about 6 mos.).
Thanks,
Jon
 
What I mean is the USB print server that you were talking about in your original post. What is it? is it a computer that shares your printer so that your other computer can use it? or is it sort of like a jetdirect?
 
I have been experienceing a similar issue, it MAY be taken care of with an airport update, I have not tried it yet, but hope to see it work.
 
Is there anyway to bypass the airport? I guess the less devices that you have to pass through to print, the better. That way there's less to go wrong.
 
I believe that IS the problem, the airport IS the print server, so there is no way to bypass it.
 
ohhh...ok. I use a linksys wireless router, so I'm not familiar with how apple's airport completly works, so thank you for the clarification.

So I guess, if they USB cable isn't bad, then when it stops working again, then cycle the power on the printer and see if that fixes the problem, if it does then its then printer. If it doesn't then cycle the power on the airport/print server and see if that imediatly fixes the problem.
 
Well, it's now been several weeks since I took Supanatral's advice and replaced the USB cable. So far it has worked flawlessly. Thanks mucho.

Lesson learned: generally, you get what you pay for

J
 
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