I have an old Brother laser printer that’s been doing fine and doesn’t need to be replaced, but it only supports USB. Is there a device besides an old computer/laptop that would make it a shared wireless printer that supports windows machines well? I’m pretty sure i could come up with something myself, but i would prefer an off-the-shelf solution that handles updates and bugs without needing any attention from me.
Edit: Raspberry Pi 5 ordered!
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You could try setting up a cheap Raspberry Pi with the print service (I forget what it’s called). Even a Pi Zero W would work, just need a USB cable to the printer.
I’ve found USB print servers to be rather pricey, since they aren’t used much any more. At least spending money on a Pi would give you something you could do a lot more with.
CUPS is probably the print server you’re thinking of.
A lot of wifi routers have a USB port on them, connect the printer straight to the router, enjoy your wireless printer.
OpenWRT FTW.
Look for a USB print server.
Yeah I’m asking for recommendations.
It’s hard to change an old brother.
U can probs get ur hands on a raspberry pi pretry cheap and put cups on it. Seems very doable chatgpt will strait up give u a step by step.
Wouldn’t I need to get a unique ARM driver for the usb printer to work?
Cups when u add a printer figures that all out and gets the appropriate driver and things u need to print.
It didn’t and I ended up with a generic driver that’s lacking a lot of function. Not the worst, and it mostly does what I need.
Oof unlucky. Did it not have ur printer in the setup wizard. Whats missing from the generic driver?
Looks like toner status and some other notifications.
CUPS eats printers and shits out function, it’s all open source so underlying isa doesn’t matter much.
I used the cheapest sbc I could find at the time which was an orange pi zero to run a CUPS server
As others have already mentioned the better method of connecting to a router, I’ll also mention if it’s located by a Windows machine you can share the printer from the printer properties window. One other option is buying a wireless adapter for the printer itself. I have fixed old printers which used the wireless adapters and I assume they worked for a long time but were a massive pain to troubleshoot as the user manuals/drivers/documentation could no longer be found online.
