This is going to be my first hardware post. We’ll start simple - I do have a copy of The Art of Electronics and a welder, so there’s a chance I might post something meaningful one day.
I was about to throw my MP460 Canon printer (80$) out of the window (8th floor, 10$ a flight of stairs). I was trying to setup a wireless print server and finally got that working, when the printer came back with an obscure 5100 error. I tried everything, including shaking it violently. What worked was a reset, and this page explains how.
- Turn off the printer
- Hold the Resume Button (red circle in the triangle), add a printer (click “Power”) an indicator light green.
- Hold the Power Button, release the Resume Button.
- Not releasing the Power Button, double click “Resume” and release Both Buttons.
- Click “Resume” for Four times
- Once you click “Power”, to confirm the selected action (reset counter absorber). To disable the printer “Power” button to click again.
On the wireless front, I got a Linksys WPS54G. None of the wizards worked, go figure. I ended up being able to connect to the printer’s HTTP configuration interface, but couldn’t configure it on Vista. It wasn’t too hard to configure manually with some help from the Linksys forums.
- Add the appropriate printer from Control Panel, Printers, Add Printer
- Select Local Printer and select Create New Port, Standard TCP/IP Port
- Device Type, TCP/IP Device.
- HostName or IPAddress should be the IP Address of the Print Server Device. I configured it with a static IP.
- After nothing is detected choose Custom, Settings
- Select LPR, set Queue Name to L2 for USB printer.
- Turn on LPR Byte Counting Enabled.
- Select the printer, install the driver.
Easy? Ahem.