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#1
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bought non-wireless priinter by mistake
My friend didn't think about wireless or laptops and bought a printer
without wireless. It connects ONLY by USB. It's too late to return it. a) I know you can disconnect a USB harddrive by just pulling the cord out, or you risk losing data**, but what's the most damage you could do just by unplugging a printer? Interrupt the job and have to print it again? And not even that if your last print job has already printed? Or if it had stopped with an error message? Maybe he can just transfer the cable from the desktop to the laptop when he wants to print. b) Or he can leave the printer connected to his desktop computer and if there were some sort of Y USB connector, maybe he could just plug the laptop in to the other fork of the Y. The Y's are called hubs, but I think of them as outgoing to more than one add-on device. Especially powered hubs. Would it work to plug the common port of a hub into the printer, one of the multiple ports into the desktop, and when needed plug the laptop in one of the other mulitple ports. (I don't know what words to use for common and mulitple. I mean input and output, but in this case the data would be going the opposite direction.) I'm interested in all this myself, so any answers for a PC are greatly appreciated. OTOH, he has a Mac. Does that make a difference? Or maybe he can make it wireless. c) I think the cheapest wireless print server I found online was 20 dollars if no one else bids. Used of course. Would anyone buy that, or would you just buy a new wireless printer? If you're curious, here's its ad. http://www.ebay.com/itm/LevelOne-WPS...em20f186d1 15 auction ends at 10:30 tonight Sunday EST d) Hmmm. I have a USB equivalent of an internal wifi card, to receive signals from the router. If it can receive internet signals from the router, can it plug into a USB printer and make a printer accept, printer text signals from the same router, coming from the local network computer instead of the the DSL modem? (I suppose not, or I'd have heard about it, but I don't know why it wouldn't.) **What if you absolutely know you haven't written to a USB hard drive for the last 10 minutes. Is there a chance of losing data or damaging the structure by just pulling out the USB cord, or by turning off t he power to the external drive?? Thanks. |
#2
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bought non-wireless priinter by mistake
micky wrote:
My friend didn't think about wireless or laptops and bought a printer without wireless. It connects ONLY by USB. It's too late to return it. Since that printer was a bargain, now the friend can buy two printers :-) One for each computer. There is no reason for the printer to freak out, if you move the USB connector. Make sure the printer has returned to the home position, before pulling a fast one on it. They make USB sharing boxes, but those don't give me a warm feeling, in terms of how long they last. I have no experience with such things, and I'd rather just move the USB connector. Metal USB connectors are rated at 5000 insertion cycles. Paul |
#3
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bought non-wireless priinter by mistake
On 07/12/2014 20:59, micky wrote:
My friend didn't think about wireless or laptops and bought a printer without wireless. It connects ONLY by USB. It's too late to return it. a) I know you can disconnect a USB harddrive by just pulling the cord out, or you risk losing data**, but what's the most damage you could do just by unplugging a printer? Interrupt the job and have to print it again? And not even that if your last print job has already printed? Or if it had stopped with an error message? Maybe he can just transfer the cable from the desktop to the laptop when he wants to print. b) Or he can leave the printer connected to his desktop computer and if there were some sort of Y USB connector, maybe he could just plug the laptop in to the other fork of the Y. The Y's are called hubs, but I think of them as outgoing to more than one add-on device. Especially powered hubs. Would it work to plug the common port of a hub into the printer, one of the multiple ports into the desktop, and when needed plug the laptop in one of the other mulitple ports. (I don't know what words to use for common and mulitple. I mean input and output, but in this case the data would be going the opposite direction.) I'm interested in all this myself, so any answers for a PC are greatly appreciated. OTOH, he has a Mac. Does that make a difference? Or maybe he can make it wireless. c) I think the cheapest wireless print server I found online was 20 dollars if no one else bids. Used of course. Would anyone buy that, or would you just buy a new wireless printer? If you're curious, here's its ad. http://www.ebay.com/itm/LevelOne-WPS...em20f186d1 15 auction ends at 10:30 tonight Sunday EST d) Hmmm. I have a USB equivalent of an internal wifi card, to receive signals from the router. If it can receive internet signals from the router, can it plug into a USB printer and make a printer accept, printer text signals from the same router, coming from the local network computer instead of the the DSL modem? (I suppose not, or I'd have heard about it, but I don't know why it wouldn't.) **What if you absolutely know you haven't written to a USB hard drive for the last 10 minutes. Is there a chance of losing data or damaging the structure by just pulling out the USB cord, or by turning off t he power to the external drive?? Thanks. All printers I have seen so far are wireless so god knows what it means in your post. However, some computers can be networked and accessed wirelessly so you need to tell us what exactly are you trying to do. To network a printer, it needs to have a network card and some machines come with the card like the HP ones I buy and on some you can insert a network card. On some it is almost impossible to insert the card and so they can be connected using what was called in the XP days as P2P. I don't use XP anymore so I won't talk about this anymore. Basically, the printer in connected to one computer and then all other machines can connect to this computer to print something - this could be wirelessly if you want it or using the cable. Hope you get the idea. |
#4
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bought non-wireless priinter by mistake
Look into a wireless print server, e.g., this
article is helpful http://www.labnol.org/gadgets/make-w...ireless/12639/ On 12/7/2014 12:59 PM, micky wrote: My friend didn't think about wireless or laptops and bought a printer without wireless. It connects ONLY by USB. It's too late to return it. a) I know you can disconnect a USB harddrive by just pulling the cord out, or you risk losing data**, but what's the most damage you could do just by unplugging a printer? Interrupt the job and have to print it again? And not even that if your last print job has already printed? Or if it had stopped with an error message? Maybe he can just transfer the cable from the desktop to the laptop when he wants to print. b) Or he can leave the printer connected to his desktop computer and if there were some sort of Y USB connector, maybe he could just plug the laptop in to the other fork of the Y. The Y's are called hubs, but I think of them as outgoing to more than one add-on device. Especially powered hubs. Would it work to plug the common port of a hub into the printer, one of the multiple ports into the desktop, and when needed plug the laptop in one of the other mulitple ports. (I don't know what words to use for common and mulitple. I mean input and output, but in this case the data would be going the opposite direction.) I'm interested in all this myself, so any answers for a PC are greatly appreciated. OTOH, he has a Mac. Does that make a difference? Or maybe he can make it wireless. c) I think the cheapest wireless print server I found online was 20 dollars if no one else bids. Used of course. Would anyone buy that, or would you just buy a new wireless printer? If you're curious, here's its ad. http://www.ebay.com/itm/LevelOne-WPS...em20f186d1 15 auction ends at 10:30 tonight Sunday EST d) Hmmm. I have a USB equivalent of an internal wifi card, to receive signals from the router. If it can receive internet signals from the router, can it plug into a USB printer and make a printer accept, printer text signals from the same router, coming from the local network computer instead of the the DSL modem? (I suppose not, or I'd have heard about it, but I don't know why it wouldn't.) **What if you absolutely know you haven't written to a USB hard drive for the last 10 minutes. Is there a chance of losing data or damaging the structure by just pulling out the USB cord, or by turning off t he power to the external drive?? Thanks. |
#5
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bought non-wireless priinter by mistake
On 12/7/2014 3:59 PM, micky wrote:
My friend didn't think about wireless or laptops and bought a printer without wireless. It connects ONLY by USB. It's too late to return it. a) I know you can disconnect a USB harddrive by just pulling the cord out, or you risk losing data**, but what's the most damage you could do just by unplugging a printer? Interrupt the job and have to print it again? And not even that if your last print job has already printed? Or if it had stopped with an error message? Maybe he can just transfer the cable from the desktop to the laptop when he wants to print. b) Or he can leave the printer connected to his desktop computer and if there were some sort of Y USB connector, maybe he could just plug the laptop in to the other fork of the Y. The Y's are called hubs, but I think of them as outgoing to more than one add-on device. Especially powered hubs. Would it work to plug the common port of a hub into the printer, one of the multiple ports into the desktop, and when needed plug the laptop in one of the other mulitple ports. (I don't know what words to use for common and mulitple. I mean input and output, but in this case the data would be going the opposite direction.) I'm interested in all this myself, so any answers for a PC are greatly appreciated. OTOH, he has a Mac. Does that make a difference? Or maybe he can make it wireless. c) I think the cheapest wireless print server I found online was 20 dollars if no one else bids. Used of course. Would anyone buy that, or would you just buy a new wireless printer? If you're curious, here's its ad. http://www.ebay.com/itm/LevelOne-WPS...em20f186d1 15 auction ends at 10:30 tonight Sunday EST d) Hmmm. I have a USB equivalent of an internal wifi card, to receive signals from the router. If it can receive internet signals from the router, can it plug into a USB printer and make a printer accept, printer text signals from the same router, coming from the local network computer instead of the the DSL modem? (I suppose not, or I'd have heard about it, but I don't know why it wouldn't.) **What if you absolutely know you haven't written to a USB hard drive for the last 10 minutes. Is there a chance of losing data or damaging the structure by just pulling out the USB cord, or by turning off t he power to the external drive?? Thanks. It depends on the printer. If the printer is just a printer and not one of the multi-function printer scanners, you may try this. (I have heard that if the print server is not bidirectional the scanner will not work as it feeds a data stream back to the computer, while the printer accepts the data stream from the computer.) I watched and found the cheapest wired print server I could find. It was A D-Link DP-300U unit, One ethernet and one USB port. I then hooked the print server to the LAN router with a standard LAN cable, and the printer to the print server. With this arrangement, the Print server appears on the Local Area network and I can print from any computer on the LAN, wired or wireless, through the print server. While the printer appears as a LAN printer you must have the printer driver on each computer that uses the printer |
#6
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bought non-wireless priinter by mistake
On Sun, 07 Dec 2014 15:59:14 -0500, micky
wrote: My friend didn't think about wireless or laptops and bought a printer without wireless. It connects ONLY by USB. It's too late to return it. Could this be a job for a Raspberry Pi? Anyone tried this? I have been looking for a reason to buy one. a) I know you can disconnect a USB harddrive by just pulling the cord out, or you risk losing data**, but what's the most damage you could do just by unplugging a printer? Interrupt the job and have to print it again? And not even that if your last print job has already printed? Or if it had stopped with an error message? Maybe he can just transfer the cable from the desktop to the laptop when he wants to print. b) Or he can leave the printer connected to his desktop computer and if there were some sort of Y USB connector, maybe he could just plug the laptop in to the other fork of the Y. The Y's are called hubs, but I think of them as outgoing to more than one add-on device. Especially powered hubs. Would it work to plug the common port of a hub into the printer, one of the multiple ports into the desktop, and when needed plug the laptop in one of the other mulitple ports. (I don't know what words to use for common and mulitple. I mean input and output, but in this case the data would be going the opposite direction.) I'm interested in all this myself, so any answers for a PC are greatly appreciated. OTOH, he has a Mac. Does that make a difference? Or maybe he can make it wireless. c) I think the cheapest wireless print server I found online was 20 dollars if no one else bids. Used of course. Would anyone buy that, or would you just buy a new wireless printer? If you're curious, here's its ad. http://www.ebay.com/itm/LevelOne-WPS...em20f186d1 15 auction ends at 10:30 tonight Sunday EST d) Hmmm. I have a USB equivalent of an internal wifi card, to receive signals from the router. If it can receive internet signals from the router, can it plug into a USB printer and make a printer accept, printer text signals from the same router, coming from the local network computer instead of the the DSL modem? (I suppose not, or I'd have heard about it, but I don't know why it wouldn't.) **What if you absolutely know you haven't written to a USB hard drive for the last 10 minutes. Is there a chance of losing data or damaging the structure by just pulling out the USB cord, or by turning off t he power to the external drive?? Thanks. |
#7
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bought non-wireless priinter by mistake
On 12/7/14 1:59 PM, micky wrote:
snip OTOH, he has a Mac. Does that make a difference? It shouldn't. You didn't say which computer was the Mac. If it's the desktop, and relatively new (mine is 5.5 years old), wireless is built-in, unlike Windows desktops I've seen. All of the solutions provided should work, but I networked my Windows computers and this Mac, and attached the USB printer to the Mac. I have a network printer now. I am not a wireless fan, so only my Win 7 netbook used wireless. When I wanted to print something from a Windows computer, I just selected the printer, actually it was the default printer, and printed. The downside in this type of scenario is the computer that has the printer connected must be on. And possibly logged in, I don't know for sure since the Mac was always on. snip -- Ken Mac OS X 10.8.5 Firefox 25.0 Thunderbird 24.6.0 "My brain is like lightning, a quick flash and it's gone!" |
#8
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bought non-wireless priinter by mistake
In article ,
micky wrote: OTOH, he has a Mac. Does that make a difference? Micky- Two possibilities: 1. An Apple AirPort Extreme (WiFi router) has a USB port that can be used with a USB printer. (An Apple Time Capsule is the same, but has a Hard Drive that can be accessed over the network.) 2. You can install the printer on a Macintosh USB port and share it over the network. Take a look at System Preferences, Sharing. Fred |
#9
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bought non-wireless priinter by mistake
In message , Good Guy
writes: On 07/12/2014 20:59, micky wrote: My friend didn't think about wireless or laptops and bought a printer without wireless. It connects ONLY by USB. It's too late to return it. (How much was the printer?) [] c) I think the cheapest wireless print server I found online was 20 dollars if no one else bids. Used of course. Would anyone buy that, or would you just buy a new wireless printer? If you're curious, [] All printers I have seen so far are wireless so god knows what it means in your post.* However, some computers can be networked and accessed Well, you haven't looked too hard; there are still wireless-less (!) printers about, though not too many in the range normally offered to home users. wirelessly so you need to tell us what exactly are you trying to do. [] Yes, it depends why micky's friend wants to make the printer wireless: is it just to avoid being tied to it, or does he want to use it from multiple machines? -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf Old soldiers never die - only young ones |
#10
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bought non-wireless priinter by mistake
Fred McKenzie wrote:
In article , micky wrote: OTOH, he has a Mac. Does that make a difference? Micky- Two possibilities: 1. An Apple AirPort Extreme (WiFi router) has a USB port that can be used with a USB printer. (An Apple Time Capsule is the same, but has a Hard Drive that can be accessed over the network.) Many routers now have USB ports, which can handle printers or usb hard drives. |
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