The slave came this weekend and after I had wall mounted the new Brother 9020 printer on an old AVF CRT TV swinging bracket( he claimed his back hurt and he couldn't lift anything) he began the installation process. In Windows, it was painless, but it was necessary to give the printer a fixed IP address from the router. Not straightforward on Netgear, as after fixing the address via the control panel, it is necessary to reboot the router before the change shows up. The instructions didn't mention this and it was only a decision to try rebooting which resolved the mystery. When we got to Linux, the fun started. The Brother site gives details of the files needed and tells you to use their installer. As numerous other people have found it didn't bloody work! Anyway following a couple of hours work on Google, we found the solution via the terminal program and the whole shebang now works on Linux. Time to get more ambitious, how about the Android printer app. Well, to our amazement, it installed perfectly (4.2.1) and in spite of the Brother website claiming the printer was not supported, it all worked perfectly first time. Total time less than 10mins. So the phone can now print it's own pictures full size on A4 (make sure you use photo paper and tell it it's a photo) and do various other things on the network printer. I now have to clone the linux drives for the other computers to avoid another download and install job. Sometimes you get lucky.
- posted
9 years ago