Idiots guide to connecting old HP LaserJet to network please?

Chris Wilson

Chris Wilson

Chris Wilson

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I have an old but well loved HP Laser Jet 4000N printer that's been connected with a parallel port cable for some years. It has a network port and I want to put in a cupboard out of the way and connect to it with a network cable, rather than the too short, and bulky, parallel cable. I have plugged it into my hub but the network fails to see it, and I can't find any instructions on how to resolve this. Can anyone give me a brief resume suitable for someone who is not very good with this sort of thing please?
 
Have you googled the manual?

You want to put it in a cupboard and have it networked up?

Also have you installed the drivers on to the local machine?

(You may or may not need to give it a static ip)
 
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The only pdf's I can find on the HP site detail adding Novell and Windows 7 or OS2 drivers, for some reason. the generic driver is loaded. I wouldn't know how to find its IP address or give it one. Thanks for the reply
 
Yea, I can see they only have instructions for Win7.

However, the same thing applies for xp if thats what your using.

See how you go with this.

To set ip manually you would go to the printer and set it in the i/o settings I think.....

Forget about manual ip for now, as that would mean you would have to get other things right like, subnet, gateways etc.... leave it on auto and see if you can get windows to do the work.

*

Edit:

This is for windows xp.

What I think you should do, is give the printer a static ip address. Then when you come to creating the printer link on the computer the ip adrress it is comunicating too, will never change.

The way you can get the ip address settings is with the printer pluged into the network, get it to print off a configuration page.

You should see IP settings.

Keep the subnet and gateway the same, but set the ip address to a static one.

After this, follow the instructions here and see how you go.
 
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Struggling with this, thanks for the ideas, but not getting very far.... Have loaded the PCL6 drivers, and they load with no warnings or anything, but the printer won't do anything, and the network doesn't show it. I have made it print a test page, but there's no sign of an IP address listed. Have done a "Cold reset", no difference. Nothing on the little screen menus showing IP details, either. The wizard says it cannot find a printer. I disabled the Windows firewall during the install. Thanks for any other ideas.
 
you can add the printer via network printer or install it as local and when it asks for port, choose tcp/ip and put in ip of printer (if you got this far and have set an IP on the printer)
 
You can either change the IP on the printer itself, or you can print out the config and then use the web interface to change it.

To change the IP on the printer, you need to go down through the menus until you find one titled EIO jetdirect, then this will have the relevant IP/subnet/gateway settings.

To print out the config:

Press the printer’s MENU button until INFORMATION MENU appears.
Press ITEM until PRINT CONFIGURATION appears.
Press SELECT to print the Configuration page.
The display will read PRINTING CONFIGURATION and the Configuration page will print.

Look for the section which is head EIO jetdirect, or something similar, under there should be a section with IP address/subnet/gateway etc. If it's set to manual, you will need to either:

Configure your router to the same subnet OR connect your PC/laptop via a crossover cable and manually set the IP to an address on the same subnet.

If it's set to DHCP, then it should have picked up an address on your network.

Just open this address in a browser, then you should be able to play with all the settings on there.

If you don't have the EIO jetdirect menu, or it's not showing on the printed out config, unfortunately chances are you have a dead jetdirect card =/
 
Config a static IP via the Printer itself, if the JetDirect menus are not appearing it's a sign the JetDirect TCP/IP print server card itself is dead. (as mentioned above)

Unscrew it, slide out and reseat and try again.

These commonly die.

At minimum you need to configure an IP and Subnet mask.

Off the Top of my head JetDirect has it's own dedicated top level menu.
 
Thanks for the link to that manual. The one I had was nothing like as comprehensive. I have now found the sub menus that print test pages beyond the basic one I had initially found. One test page has the IP address of the printer listed, 192.168.0.3 and entering that as the printer ID has woken it up, and it now prints from the network. Thanks for all the detailed replies and your patience. I owe you one, but as I am a race car engineer you may not find my speciality knowledge base particularly useful ;) Thanks again.
 
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