Can you add WiFi printing capability to a printer that didn't come with it?
Asked by
2davidc8 (
10189
)
July 5th, 2021
I have an HP black and white laser printer that was made many, many years ago, before there was USB and WiFi. You connected your laptop or desktop directly to it using Ethernet.
It was still printing great when I stopped using it because I switched to color printing and found wireless printing very convenient.
Now I’m wondering if it’s possible to give it WiFi wireless printing capability. My router has an Ethernet port. I probably need a converter with the necessary drivers and software, no? Would it be worth it?
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11 Answers
You could play around with something like this
No guarantees.
Can I simply connect the printer to the router with an Ethernet cable, then load the appropriate driver on my laptop? Would that work?
Yes, but depending on how old the printer is, you may not find drivers compatible with your OS. I had that problem with my old scanner, for which there were no drivers compatible with Vista and above.
I have a HP all-in-one inkjet that HP stopped updating after 13 years. When they did that I ended up with a 20 pound brick.
If it has an ethernet port, wiring it to the router is the normal and best way to use it. A driver will almost certainly already be on your computer for any ethernet HP printer, because they have been the office standard for decades. Pick LaserJet 4 if the computer does not figure out the model on its own.
HP adds new computers to the list and updates to printer routines. Planned obsolescence.
I get that it’s evil planned obsolescence… even planned sabotage… but I still don’t understand what you mean by the first part of that explanation.
If the printer had working drivers at one point, wouldn’t those drivers, or a standard generic printer driver, still tend to work? (That’s a rhetorical question – I’m a software developer and know the answer is yes, but I wonder specifically what they sabotaged – did they just provide no support for generic drivers, and no drivers for new major versions of popular operating systems, so when/if people get the latest OS, it won’t work with old HP printers? Or did they actually provide new drivers that bricked the older printers?)
@Zaku
It is an all-in-one, lots of moving parts, bricked is a good term. It was 14 years old.
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