ming

I've just received my belkin print server from Dabs.com and after spending almost 1 hr getting my computer to connect to the print server it's finally recognised the port and printed a test page.

However, since this computer originally connected to the printer via USB, I'm not sure how to get my other computers connected to the print server as they were not configured to have a "local" printer - therefore they would not have the USB printer drivers installed.

Want to ask if anyone else have a print server and how would I connect the wireless PCs to the print server and/or install printer drivers if necessary.

Note: If I put the driver CD into a PC, it requires me to physically connect the printer to the machine in order to complete the installation of the printer drivers....
I don't want to be messing around with the cabling and carrying the printer up and down the house.

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Dublex

An idea - are your computers networked? as you could designate one PC to be a "master" PC and then turn on shared printing on all the other systems. - That is allow print sharing on that PC and then get the other PCs to detect / use the printer over the network. That way it should use the print server's drivers and you shouldn't have to worry about USB connections etc.

ming

They are networked, but the reason for getting a print server is that I don't usually leave any computers switched on. So if someone wants to print, the print server will allow them to without me having to switch on my PC.

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Dublex

Ahh - a hardware solution then like a router. What is the type / model number of print server that you have?

I just did a google search and found an article at this link:

http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/Prin...r%20device.htm

Is this helpful at all?

ming

Can't remember off the top of my head as I'm not near the device at the moment. But I think it's Belkin F1U001 or something like that. There's only one or two print servers from Belkin.
I can see the server when browsing for 192.x.x.x, but my main problem getting a proper connection to print documents. I'm assuming that I must have the printer drivers on each machine in order to print via the print server.
As mentioned before, I don't want to mess around with the cabling and I don't want to carry the printer up and down the house just to install the drivers on each machine.
(This is required to complete the installation of drivers.)

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Dublex

Thats odd, as theoretically you should be able to connect to the print server over the network - is the device not detected at all in terms of adding it as a networked printer / setting it up as a local port printer? as you should be able to set up the drivers via the printer wizard. Has the print server been assigned a name and is it linked with its IP address?

I'm not really experienced in hardware print device servers, just mainly bashing out some ideas.

bush dogg

I use a Linksys psus4 print server and to get all working right I had to install the printer on each system first then when finished connect the printer to the psus4. I also had to run the print server setup on all systems.

Once I did that it worked real nice. I don't have to leave one system on as the print server all the time if I don't want to this way.

ming

So there's no way around this? I HAVE to install the printer drivers and hook up the printer to each machine first?

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ming

OK, found my way around this now. I installed the print server/New printer port for Server before 'manually' adding a printer which installed the drivers only without requiring me to have it physically connected to the USB plug.

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bush dogg

Well not that I could find. I messed with it over a half a day trying not to connect the printer to each system and then called linksys to see if there was a way around it. Linksys said no so I packed the printer and software around and was done in about an hour with all working well.

bush dogg

That's cool I tried that and didn't work for me. I guess disregard my last post it must be a linksys thing.

ming

Yep it definitely works on all machines now. =)
Had problems getting the server port installed. Belkin are so stupid that they forgot to add the .hlp file into the same folder as the utilities folder. Not sure why the .hlp file was required though. lol

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Dublex

sounds sensible ming - also it was an idea I was working towards but didn't hit entirely when I was thinking about it.

I think you deserve rep points for solving the problem yourself