Solved Brother HP-3170cdw network printer setup

P

Paul Floyd

Hi

I recently bought a Brother HL-3170CDW and frankly it's a bit of a nightmare to configure. Out of the box it is configured with DHCP but even on Windows the driver install just detected what IP address had been assigned so it would only work randomly.

Now I've set up a static IP address.

On FreeBSD, CUPS could detect the printer but initially not print to it. Now with a static IP address I've managed to get the CUPS test page print to do something, but it produces just a blank page.

The config that I'm currently using is

Driver: Generic PostScript Printer (color)
Connection: lpd://[IP ADDRESS]/POSTSCRIPT_P1

I'm not at all impressed with the Brother documentation and configuration web page.

Any suggestions?

A+
Paul
 
A quick google of hl3170cdw freebsd brings this page.
http://www.bitmine.org/brother-hl-3170cdw-FreeBSD/

and also this, https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/brother-laser-printer-compability.54717/ where scanning through the rather long thread indicates that the user installed cups and used the OSX (now MacOS, right?) ppd file.
There were several other hits that seemed as if they might prove useful.
wblock@'s page might be helpful. It's about using lpd rather than cups.
http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/lpdprinting.html.
 
I use a static IP, networked Brother, BR-script3 monochrome laser on lpd. Mine is setup via foomatic-rip and works perfectly. I use the jetdirect port.
/etc/printcap
Code: 
# /etc/printcap: printer capability database. See printcap(5).
# You can use the filter entries df, tf, cf, gf etc. for
# your own filters. See /etc/filter.ps, /etc/filter.pcl and
# the printcap(5) manual page for further details.

lp:\|
        :lp=9100@Brother.home.yak:\
        :if=/usr/local/libexec/br_script:\
        :sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp:\
        :lf=/var/log/lp-errs:\
        :mx#0:\
        :sh:
/usr/local/libexec/br_script
Code: 
#!/bin/sh
/usr/local/bin/foomatic-rip --ppd \
/etc/foomatic/direct/Brother-HL-5450DN_BR-script3.ppd \
-o pagesize=letter


There are two sources for the ppd.
1) Brother Solutions center

2) OpenBSD instructions for foomatic-rip and foomatic-ppd
Note, you will have to change some locations for the spool files and /etc/foomatic/direct

My lpd setup uses 4 print queues: Single page 600dpi, Duplex 600dpi, Single 1200dpi and Env10. Since yours is color, other potential queues would be monochrome and photo.
 
scottro said:
A quick google of hl3170cdw freebsd brings this page.
http://www.bitmine.org/brother-hl-3170cdw-FreeBSD/j

and also this, https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/brother-laser-printer-compability.54717/ where scanning through the rather long thread indicates that the user installed cups and used the OSX (now MacOS, right?) ppd file.
There were several other hits that seemed as if they might prove useful.
wblock@'s page might be helpful. It's about using lpd rather than cups.
http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/lpdprinting.html.
Click to expand...

[There's a trailing 'j' in the 1st link above]

I switched to using Generic PDF printer and it worked. Must be some issue somewhere with the Generic PostScript driver on FreeBSD (it worked 1st time on Solaris 11.3).
 
Use the following URL to connect to it:
ipp://ip-of-printer/ipp/port1

(That's a literal string "port1".)

Select the Generic PDF Printer driver.

Once it's installed, go into the printer options and switch the Duplexer option to Installed.

Done.

Easy-peasy. Had mine up and running on Android, Windows, and FreeBSD within 30 minutes.

You can go to the IP of the printer in a web browser to configure it.
 
Thank you all for the input. I had almost given up on our family printer, and now I at least got some empty page (gutenprint is crashing somewhere... but hey, progress!)
 
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