drivers for old printers in Africa

  • Thread starter Thread starter Simonmall3
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Simonmall3

I am currently teaching in Swaziland with a development organisation. As you
can imagine school and college resources are very scarce, and we have to make
do with what we can get. We need printers, and people give us old ones. Usually
we can scrounge or find old stocks of cartridges etc, but drivers are the
problem.

For example, can anyone tell me how to get hold of a driver to allow me to use
the old but perfectly serviceable Fax./copy/print HP laser Jet 3100 (we have
spare cartrideges)with Windows XP. HP simply do not support and it seems a
ridiculous waste just to dump OK equipment. There are lots of similar cases,
but I am just turning the machines away while kids never get access to printers
or stand in line for half an hour to use the basic inkjet or the dot matrix we
have working.


Regards

SimonM
 
Why don´t you use W2k driver in XP. Worked fine for me.
You have to find the driver from internet, supplied drivers won´t work.
 
I am currently teaching in Swaziland with a development organisation. As you
can imagine school and college resources are very scarce, and we have to make
do with what we can get. We need printers, and people give us old ones. Usually
we can scrounge or find old stocks of cartridges etc, but drivers are the
problem.

For example, can anyone tell me how to get hold of a driver to allow me to use
the old but perfectly serviceable Fax./copy/print HP laser Jet 3100 (we have
spare cartrideges)with Windows XP. HP simply do not support and it seems a
ridiculous waste just to dump OK equipment. There are lots of similar cases,
but I am just turning the machines away while kids never get access to printers
or stand in line for half an hour to use the basic inkjet or the dot matrix we
have working.
Click to expand...

There are 3 ways.
1. Downgrade to an operating system that is compatible with the hardware,
(and tell Microsoft you can't upgrade since the changed their driver model)
2. If it is a PCL printer, just pick another standrad PCL printer driver
or
3. Set up a Linux box as a printserver, it supports lots of ancient hardware,
and can present it to Windows as something else.

Of course you can do as someone else suggested, use the W2k drivers in
Windows XP.
 
I am currently teaching in Swaziland with a development organisation. As you
can imagine school and college resources are very scarce, and we have to make
do with what we can get. We need printers, and people give us
old ones. Usually
we can scrounge or find old stocks of cartridges etc, but drivers are the
problem.

For example, can anyone tell me how to get hold of a driver to allow
me to use
the old but perfectly serviceable Fax./copy/print HP laser Jet 3100 (we have
spare cartrideges)with Windows XP. HP simply do not support and it seems a
ridiculous waste just to dump OK equipment. There are lots of similar cases,
but I am just turning the machines away while kids never get access
to printers
or stand in line for half an hour to use the basic inkjet or the
dot matrix we have working.
Click to expand...

Aside from the maufacturers' sites, one place to start is
<http://www.driverguide.com/>. You have to register to use it, but I
did a while ago and no spam.

Even though you're not using Linux (though you should be...) look at
<http://www.linuxprinting.org/printer_list.cgi> This tells you how to
get a printer working under Linux, and describes the kind of driver it
uses. Look at the compatibility list and often you will find a
compatible one that is preinstalled in Windows, use that driver.

Many printers, except the cheapest "winprinters" aka "host based"
ones, emulate a standard printer with a known printer language, e.g.
Epson ESC (mostly dot matrix), HP PCL (Lasers, note the level 3, 4, 5,
6).

Many, but not all, older printer drivers will install in XP, though it
tells you it "isn't signed"; just ignore that and try it. If it really
doesn't work, and you have a driver for Win 3.1, install a dual boot
for that. Actually, I imagine that you're mostly just printing
documents. Word 2 on Win 3.1 is really all you need. It's quite
amazing how fast old software is when run on hardware a generation or
more younger than it is.

Also, you might look into getting some networking to share the
printers. It's really very cheap to do.
 
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