05-12-2008, 02:08 PM
My airport extreme loses track of the attached printer. No rhyme or reason to it other than turning it off will almost certainly cause it to get lost. Problem is, turning off the printer, unplugging the printer from the AE, resetting the AE, turning on the printer, plugging it back into the AE doesn't necessarily bring it back. Then I have to go through a reinstall of the driver and it will (usually) appear as Brother 6800-1 along with the "lost" original 6800 driver. This, of course requires a restart so whatever I was trying to print will likely be lost - as in a FedEx shipping label. Meanwhile, yesterday, when I had to print the FedEx label, I just plugged the printer directly into the mac and the existing 6800 driver was fine. The printer will not show up however, in the Airport setup dialog without reinstalling the driver. Even then, sometimes it's catch as catch can. This is starting to pi$$ me off.
I didn't mention the possibility of adding her printer to the Time Capsule I sent my friend as she would put up with this far less than I'm willing to.
The printer I'm using is a Brother 6800 MFC and all I'm using it for is to print - no scanning, faxing, etc. It's plugged int a powered hub that also connects a 750 GB drive I use as a Time Machine backup. I never lose the HDD, just the printer indicates no printer connected. When it works, it's a champ, but it always seems to lose the printer when I really need to get something done in a hurry. I printed 20 pages of rebate forms earlier in the day, but when it came time for the FedEx label, no go.
My AE is the 10/100 model, not gigabit. I believe I have the latest firmware - saw that mentioned as a "fix" for some of many complaining about this problem on the Apple forum.
Hints (other than what I've tried already)?
Maybe it's time for me to buy a network ready printer.
I didn't mention the possibility of adding her printer to the Time Capsule I sent my friend as she would put up with this far less than I'm willing to.
The printer I'm using is a Brother 6800 MFC and all I'm using it for is to print - no scanning, faxing, etc. It's plugged int a powered hub that also connects a 750 GB drive I use as a Time Machine backup. I never lose the HDD, just the printer indicates no printer connected. When it works, it's a champ, but it always seems to lose the printer when I really need to get something done in a hurry. I printed 20 pages of rebate forms earlier in the day, but when it came time for the FedEx label, no go.
My AE is the 10/100 model, not gigabit. I believe I have the latest firmware - saw that mentioned as a "fix" for some of many complaining about this problem on the Apple forum.
Hints (other than what I've tried already)?
Maybe it's time for me to buy a network ready printer.
