connect old printer to new pc

krishna

Trying to connect an old HP laserjet 5M (this is a mono printer not the colour one with the same name) to a PC running windows 7 64bit. PC needs USB, printer has serial, parallel and upto now an ethernet port. However, the network connection in the printer seems to be faulty. Printer is connected to our home network via an ethernet port on the router. Computer no longer recognises the printer. Nor does the second computer we have. I have checked the network settings on the printer and that the right ip address is used on the computer, but still doesn't find it. I have a feeling the jetdirect card may have packed in. Would appreciate any additional input on getting it back up, or on getting the printer connected via serial port to the USB port on the computer..

fenlander_uk

Plenty of usb to parallel and usb to serial adapters available for a few pounds. Try Amazon or Ebay.

paddyrg

No matter what, you may find getting the right drivers a pain for a new 64-bit OS and an ancient (I'm afraid 1996 is positively prehistoric these days) printer.

Mr_Toad

Last weekend I finally persuaded a friend to replace her aging PC with a new one. The only fly in the ointment was her old HP deskjet 815C, it has a parallel interface and the PC doesn't.

She bought an adapter cable via Amazon for under a fiver. It works perfectly with Windows 8, much to my surprise and she didn't even need my help to get it going. She followed the simple instructions that came with the adapter cable and that was it.

fenlander_uk

Until recently I was using an old Laserjet 4L via a parallel to usb cable. No special drivers were needed - it just worked. It even worked fine plugged into a TP-Link print server like this.

AndysDad

How about this if you think your card is defective
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-Jetdirect-615N-Print-Server-J6057A-/190806764094?pt=UK_Computing_Print_Servers&hash=item2c6cf82a3e

phona

The fact that your printer picks up an IP address suggests that it's not the network that's the problem. Can you ping the printer from the PC? Open command prompt and type the word ping followed by the printer's IP eg "ping 192.168.0.5". If it receives a reply from the printer IP then the network connection is fine and it's most likely a driver problem. If the ping fails (eg destination host unreachable) then it's the network, possibly the JetDirect as you suggested.

I spent many a "happy" hour with old HP printers and Windows 7 computers in my old job so let me know the results of the ping and I'll try to help from there!

forgotmyname

Stupid firewall is probably the issue. As Firewalls got better (more bloated) they appear to like randomly blocking computers on my home network.

One day they work fine data transfer both ways, Then the next day i can access the other one but they cannot access mine.

Then it will switch,

krishna

Sorry for delay in replying, in process of switching Broadband from Xilo to Plusnet and Xilo kindly cut me off 36 hours early, leaving me without a connection.

Can't ping the printer. Tried that before. So I think it must be the jetdirect card. My problem with parallel to USB or serial to USB cables is knowing what will work with 64bit windows 7. Seem to be several on Amazon that don't work (according to the reviews). If anyone can point me in the direction of a cable that works that would be great.
I might try the £7 jetdirect card on ebay anyway.

Spankey

krishna wrote: »

Sorry for delay in replying, in process of switching Broadband from Xilo to Plusnet and Xilo kindly cut me off 36 hours early, leaving me without a connection.

Can't ping the printer. Tried that before. So I think it must be the jetdirect card. My problem with parallel to USB or serial to USB cables is knowing what will work with 64bit windows 7. Seem to be several on Amazon that don't work (according to the reviews). If anyone can point me in the direction of a cable that works that would be great.
I might try the £7 jetdirect card on ebay anyway.

Or get down to local Tesco superstore and buy new Hewlett Packard printer/scanner/copier for £25-£29 and no more problems.

Im_just_careful

Does the "link" light come up on the Ethernet port when the cable is plugged in ?

I don't suppose the IP address range used by the remaining devices has changed. For example some Broadband routers use 192.168.0.xxx as their range and others 192.168.1.xxx

Devices that connect using DHCP will work, if the printer static IP address is outside the "local" range of addresses (subnet) it won't be seen from any PC.