Wireless Printing?

[miston]

A friend of mine, a retired Catholic Brother, just got a wireless router to accompany his cable modem and his laptop. I mentioned that he ought to get a wireless print server, but turns out they are pretty expensive.

In hindsight he should have got a wireless router that includes a printserver, but too late. All he wants to do is to be able to print from his laptop to his printer. Since he already has a router with extra free ports, whats the cheapest rout?

Can I not just find a cheap used print server on EBAY and hook it up to the router? If so, is this pretty easy to setup? What device should I search for?

THANKS for any help!

 

[Wik]

First, what kind of connection port does the printer use? Both of my printers are using HP print servers. My 5Si uses a print server card in the machine. My 812c is on an old HP external print server. Both work the same way. If your printer does not have to use USB, you should be able to pick up a older print server fairly cheap. I think I paid $30 of 3 old HP jetdirects.

 

[miston]

He just as an older parallel HP Deskjet, so I just need to find a HP JetDirect! Awesome! THANKS!

How do I set it up? His laptop runs Windows 2000. Can the printer just connect using Windows Networking? Will windows be able to find the printer easily?

 

[miston]

There are SO many different kinds of HP JetDirects on ebay! Does it matter which one?

 

[Wik]

As long as it is an ethernet print server.

Plug the printer into the server, plug the server into the network. In Windows 2000, Add Printer. Printer connected to this computer, should be a tab below for the type of port. Choose TCP/IP. go from there. The print server should have a book on how to set the IP. DHCP is on by default, but you will still need to know the IP of it. You can easliy find out by looking at the router log, or running a program like angryIP scanner.

 

[Wik]

Here is a step by step for Win2K

HP print server

 

[Wik]

I know there is a lot of 3 going on Ebay now for about $10. They are the same thing that I have. You can always search HP with the part number, to make sure it is a 10Base-T ethernet server. The J2382 is one of them

 

[miston]

thanks for the help! Bidding on a few on Ebay!