I'm using an older 450mhz Celeron machine as a work-horse router, printer server, and file server. All the computers in our house are connected ad-hoc via USB wireless adapters. The adapter on the server is a Linksys WUSB11 version 2.6. I have compiled the latest Atmel driver for it.

I have 2 printers connected to it. One is a Brother MFC9600 and the other is a Lexmark Z25. I am using LPRng spooling since CUPS does not seem to work with the Lexmark. This could just as easily be because I don't know how to manually configure it. Lexmark provides Linux drivers and a nice print utility (thank you!). LinuxPrinting.org rates the Brother MFC series as being pretty marginal in terms of support. They recommend the HL-1250 driver because it provides 600x600 resolution. I have also used a generic HP2P driver since that is what the Brother manual says it emulates.

A local test print works for both printers. However, with the Brother my wireless USB adapter on the server quits transmitting. I can hotplug it and it starts transmitting again. Any thoughts on what could be going on here?

Also, my distribution is SuSE 8.2 and I'm using YaST to configure printing. While YaST seems to do a great job of properly writing out config files something has gone south with the printer configuration. Printing to either queue is routed to the Lexmark. My guess is YaST gets confused since the Lexmark is defined externally.

I've tried redoing the steps but the following results happen each time in /etc/printcap:

##PRINTTOOL3## LOCAL
lexmarkz25-z35:\
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/lexmark:\
:mx#0:\
:mc#99:\
:sh:\
:rw:\
:lp=/dev/null:\
:if=/usr/bin/LexmarkZ35:\
:lf=/var/spool/lexmark/Z35Driver/lpd.log:
##PRINTTOOL3## LOCAL
lp:\
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/lexmark:\
:mx#0:\
:mc#99:\
:sh:\
:rw:\
:lp=/dev/null:\
:if=/usr/bin/LexmarkZ35:\
:lf=/var/spool/lexmark/Z35Driver/lpd.log:

I've tried playing with this one file manually but it appears other files are involved too. At this point I don't know how to proceed. Any help will be most welcome.

Thanks,
Eric

I've finally solved these issues on my own after a several hours of tinkering. It turns out the problem with having my wireless connection zapped was caused by its proximity to the printer. When the printer kicks in it must spew a bunch of RF because when I moved the wireless adapter it no longer exhibited the weird behavior. Just to make sure I moved it back next to the printer and it was knocked offline and then moved it away and it worked ok.

The second problem must be a bug in the Lexmark install. I tried all combinations of uninstalling and reinstalling in different orders. Finally, I installed just the Brother and then copied the printcap file. I then installed the Lexmark and replaced the incorrect lp entries with the ones originally generated by YaST for the Brother. Now everything works properly.

Regards,
Eric

OK .... so I have it fixed finally .... no really ... god I hope so.

There is no issue with my printer spewing RF and knocking the WUSB11 off-line. It appeared that way but my testing was not rigorous enough. I won't go into all the gory details but the problem was caused by using a 4-way hub extender on one of my USB busses. I removed the hub and have printed back and forth between my Brother and Lexmark many times and all is now well.

It's a solution I can live with but someone more experienced could likely get this working with the hub in place.

Regards,
Eric