Why Can't Stuff Just Work?

This morning I received a work e-mail indicating that something is broken with a system over which I am responsible. I quickly went to work troubleshooting the issue. I used AI to help me comb through our system documentation and found a number of possible leads on how to solve the issue. I threw it out to the people reporting the problem only to discover our documentation is incorrect. I had to go back to square one.

I'm trying to solve the issue at work when I get a text from my wife who can't get the new toner cartridges to work at the office. That shouldn't really bother me as I'm not paid to help troubleshoot her office computer problems. Unfortunately we have the same printer at home and I just bought the same toner cartridges for ours. While I don't need them to work now, I will in the future. Furthermore today is the 31st day after I received them from Amazon which means I am past the 30-day return window.

Now two problems to solve in the same day shouldn't be a problem. Any mother with a 4-year old knows that is the first 10 minutes of every day. However I try to ensure all of my technologies stay working and don't break down. Discovering you need to print something important only to have new toner cartridges not recognized might lead to panic and expletives. Fortunately my wife discovered that problem early.

To address the issue at work, I gathered more information and looked at possible solutions. Then I made sure not to commit to anything on the behalf of others. If I can fix something, then I can commit. If the solution involves others, I can't speak for their time. This keeps others from committing my time. It looks like we will need to have network engineers involved in the solution and so I need to make my notes available and let others solve the problem.

For the printer, I exchanged a number of messages with my wife. She was unable to get her printer working but succeeded in returning her work toner cartridges to Amazon. So I gave them a call. I explained the process she went through and how I have the same printer and would rather return unopened product which might be resold to someone that can use them. The Amazon customer service agent looked up the details of my purchase and immediately agreed to allow me to return them for a full refund.

Now the only problem is that my printer is almost out of toner and I need to order replacement cartridges. HP makes my printer and they have gotten wise to Chinese manufacturers selling compatible toner for half the price. To combat it, they require a special chip in new cartridges and regularly update printer firmware to reject any toner than their own. If you want to ensure your printer will continue to work, you have to buy new cartridges from HP. Yes they are more expensive but at least they should work, right? I sure hope so cause it is really expensive.

Getting Old Printers to Work on New Macs

The saga that has become getting my wife's new computer working is finally over. Yesterday I sat down and figured out how to get all of our printers usable on her new MacBook air. It involved countless Internet searches, none of which helped solve the problem. In fact, one post that I followed created more issues that I had to work around. For anyone who has upgraded from an Intel-based Mac to one of the new Apple silicon Macs, there is one little step that I discovered on my own should you want to use any of your existing printers.

Apple's Migration Assistant did a great job of moving all of my wife's files from her old computer to her new one. It even copied over non-approved programs like printer drivers engineered for the Intel CPUs. The problem surfaces when you try to run them but let's not jump ahead of the story.

My wife needed to print something up last Friday and could not. I did not have time to help her solve the issue at the time and finally got around to looking at it earlier this week. We have 3 printers in the house and she really only uses 2 of them. Neither of them would connect to her new computer. I looked up a number of forums and the best information I had told me to delete the files out of a printer directory. DO NOT DO THAT. I won't repeat where that directory is as that caused an issue I had to remedy, which I will explain at the end of the post.

Nowhere did I find the correct instructions and so I am posting them here. All I needed to do was install Apple's Rosetta 2 software. It allows programs created for the Intel Macs to run on the new Apple M-series CPUs. I discovered this solution when I tried to install printer-driver software. It asked if I wanted to install Rosetta. The first time I said, No. The second time, I gave it a shot. That allowed my Samsung color laser printer to work with my wife's laptop.

Most people will not have a problem with printers unless they are really old like mine. Apple has come up with an all-encompassing printing system packaged with MacOS called AirPrint. There are a huge number of printers supported already. Just not really old ones. Fortunately one of my printers that my wife never uses is on the list and is my Cannon. I connected her computer directly to the printer through a USB cable and it printed without issue.

The last printer I needed to get running is my wife's HP Deskjet 1000 - J110. Apple's Migration Assistant copied over all of the correct driver files but I mistakenly blew them away at the advice of a post I read. Once I figured out I needed to reinstall all the driver files, I looked for them directly from HP. None of the programs I tried worked. I still have the old Mac and so I located all of the files and copied them to the new computer. I used the command-line interface or terminal to do all of the copying and will spare you the details. It involved the "tar" command to create single file that had all of the driver files in their correct directories. Once I copied that single file to the new computer, I used the "tar" command again to install the files in the correct place.

At this point in the process I had to go somewhere and didn't get back to it until yesterday. I thought I had done everything correctly and tried to print something. I immediately got an error message telling me that the MacOS refused to run a program because it couldn't trust the source. I had to use the administrator password to force the computer to run the program. The same thing happened 3 or 4 more times with different programs. Finally I stopped getting error messages but the printer refused to print. At this point I did the only thing that made sense: I rebooted the computer. When the computer came back up, I tried to print a page and it worked. I can now say that my wife's new computer is as usable as the old one before it died.

Should you get a new M-series Mac computer from Apple and want it to work with your old printer, don't do anything other than install Rosetta 2. Your computer will ask if you want to install it and just say, Yes. You don't have to go look for it or do anything special. Then things should work well. If they don't, try a reboot before doing anything else. If that still doesn't work, throw away your old printer and go buy a new one.

School Starts Again

It seems as if school starts earlier each year. Yesterday my kids went back to school. When I was younger, I remember starting the day after Labor day. I remember the school year shifting so that it started the week before Labor day as my own kids became of age. Now they are starting two weeks before.

Last night we headed down to the store to buy new school supplies. We keep a fairly well stocked stationary cabinet in my home office and so there wasn't much we needed. A few spiral-bound notebooks, highlighters, colored pencils and we were set.

It is also time to make sure the computers are set up and ready for the year. I need to update the operating system on the family computer as it is a few releases behind where it should be. I also need to make sure we have enough paper and toner for the two printers (one is color, the other black and white). It will probably be a few weeks before the first papers are due, but it is important to get these things taken care of before you are up into the wee hours of the morning helping your kid get that term paper printed. Running out of printer supplies at 1:00 am can lead to kids learning a whole new vocabulary.

Which Printer for College?

My previous posting talked about which computer is best to send to school with your college-aged kid. When I was done, I realized that I left out one very important peripheral: a printer.

When I was headed off to college back in 1986, you had a choice between dot-matrix or daisy-wheel printers. Nobody had a laser printer as they were just being created. As luck would have it, my Dad was doing advertising for a new laser-printer company and they couldn't afford to pay his fee and so they gave him four units. We were living in San Jose, California at the time and were able to trade a couple of them for new computers at a local high-tech swap meet. I was headed to school with a brand-new IBM PC and a laser printer. As far as I was concerned life was perfect.

I headed off to train at Mt. Hood with the college ski team while my family packed my car and drove it to Utah for my Freshman year. When I got done with a great week of skiing, I headed down to school and met my family. As I was unpacking my stuff with my Dad, he pulled out a brand-new dot-matrix printer. I asked him what happened to my laser printer and he told me he had traded it for a new x286 computer. It was twice as fast as his old PC and I would have to survive with the dot-matrix printer.

I was heart-broken. Sure the dot-matrix printer was what all the other kids were using if they were lucky enough to even have a computer and printer. However I really wanted that laser printer and still regret not having it. So when it came time to get my daughter a printer to go with her new MacBook, I looked at all the options. Today you basically have three types of printers to choose from:

1. Color inkjet
2. Black & white laser
3. Color laser

Color inkjet printers have gotten so cheap that they practically throw one in for free when you buy a new laptop. The quality is pretty good and you have the option of printing in color, not just black & white. The problem is that the cartridges don't hold much ink and they have an uncanny ability to run out during the middle of printing a rather long term-paper.

Black & white laser printers are not much more than the color inkjet printers. However they don't print in color. They do have a toner cartridge that lasts a lot longer though. My black & white laser printer that the kids have used for doing school papers goes about a year between cartridge changes. As for quality, there is not contest. The laser printer is significantly higher quality than the inkjet printers.

Finally there are color laser printers. At the time I was getting ready to send my daughter off to school, they were three to four times as expensive as the black & white laser printers. It was already starting to be a costly month and so I quickly dismissed the option.

In the end my wife and I decided that the black & white laser printer was the best option for our daughter. My wife found an inexpensive HP and purchased it at a local office-supply store. I probably should have been there to help decide on the purchase as the printer only worked with Windows. The night before my daughter was headed off to school, I was stuck trying to figure out how to make a Windows-only printer work with a Mac.

The internet is a wonderful tool and I was able to find help from someone else who had gone through the same pain. We had to download a driver to the computer and another program for the printer. When my daughter turns on the laser printer, she has to download a program from her computer to the printer but then she is able to print.

Now after two years of essays and papers the laser printer is still going strong. Furthermore, several of her roommates have had to rely on her printer late at night when their inkjets have failed or run out of ink. One problem that inkjets have is that the ink can harden and clog the jets. Cleaning the jets at 3am when your paper is due at 8am can turn a sleep-deprived-college coed into a raving lunatic.

So far my daughter and I are happy with the choice of a laser printer for college. If I had the money I would have prefered to send her to school with a color-laser printer so she could produce those stand-above-the-rest papers. However we chose something that was a good value, has worked and continues to work. As for her toner cartridge, the original one is still being used but she has a spare for when the time comes to replace it. Toner cartridges make great Christmas gifts, in case you are interested.