Help needed with a printing problem

tomdkat

tomdkat

Registered
So, a friend of mine has a MacBook Pro running Leopard (10.5.x, I forget the actual release) and she's been experiencing an occasional printing problem.

She has an old Apple LaserWriter that she prints to using an Asante box which connects to her LAN. She also has a HP or Epson (I forget which) inkjet printer that is connected to the system via USB cable, which I think goes through a USB hub.

Anyway, she'll be able to print to either printer ok then suddenly she won't be able to print to either printer. I can see not being able to print to one of the printers but not being able to print to EITHER printer, at the same time, makes me think some kind of printing subsystem has crashed or something along those lines.

Any tips on troubleshooting this to find out what's wrong?

Thanks!

Peace...
 
When asking for help with a device, you should give the specific model device for which you need help. Asanté produces more than one device. Therefore Asanté box is insufficient to identify your specific Asanté device. You also need to be clear about what is connected to what and how they are connected.

I assume that your Asanté box is an AsantéTalk bridge. Try two things:
  • Power-off the box and then power it back up.
  • Try setting-up the printer again.
 
MisterMe said:
When asking for help with a device, you should give the specific model device for which you need help. Asanté produces more than one device. Therefore Asanté box is insufficient to identify your specific Asanté device. You also need to be clear about what is connected to what and how they are connected.

I assume that your Asanté box is an AsantéTalk bridge. Try two things:
  • Power-off the box and then power it back up.
  • Try setting-up the printer again.
Click to expand...
Yep, I do realize I was being vague with regard to the particular hardware components involved. Given I posted the message without having the system in front of me, I was going by memory as best as I could. Additionally, the fact that both printers not being able to be printed to at the same time made me think the point of failure was on the Mac side.

We've been having to reset the AsanteTalk Bridge with some frequency, so I'm thinking maybe the LaserWriter is on its way out. Simply powering off the AsanteTalk bridge isn't sufficient and we're having to allow more time in between restarting the printer and the AsanteTalk bridge before being able to successfully print.

Here are the hardware components in question:
  • HP DeskJet F4280 (USB connection)
  • Apple LaserWriter 4/600 PS (connected via AsanteTalk Bridge)
  • MacBook Pro w/ 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 512MB RAM, Leopard, 10.5.8

I can see not being able to print to either the HP DeskJet printer OR the LaserWriter but not being able to print to either and at the same time struck me as rather odd.

Today, I managed to get both printers printing again and we'll see how long that lasts.

Thanks for the reply. :)

Peace...
 
Satcomer said:
Well download the 10.5 version of the shareware Print Therapy (it has a 7 day trial) and use that software to try to fix the Mac's printing system. See if it helps.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the suggest!ion

I downloaded the trial and ran it and it found some things:
  • 105 printer driver files had incorrect file permissions
  • An old cupsd.conf file had been detected
  • The cupsd.conf file needed to be updated

After correcting those things and doing my AsanteTalk Bridge "reset procedure", I managed to get the LaserWriter printing again. The utility didn't identify anything that appeared to be a serious problem or anything. Perhaps the upgrading of the cupsd.conf file will actually do the trick.

In any event, thanks again for mentioning this tool!

Peace...
 
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