Post 2270 - Wrassum Frassum

I need a drink.  Maybe two.  Maybe I should have take these drinks intravenously.

I have spent the last 3 hours trying to get the Samsung 2955DW printer working.  I have it working in the sense that I can use this desktop computer to talk to the printer, via a fixed usb connection.  Works very well indeed.  The text quality is very high.

But to get it working on my network?  Yeah.  Sure.

I was supposed to be able to run a utility to set up the IP address for the printer which would in turn allow the "add network printer wizard" to find the printer.  But every time I tried to enter the MAC address, the IP address or whatever, the utility told me that the values were all invalid, even though those were the figures specified in the network configuration report.

The only hint I got was that it took a good 30 seconds to come back with that error message.  I know from work that if it takes that long to produce an error message, that it often points to a firewall issue.  I found out how to disable the firewall so that I could in turn re-enter the above information.  But it still wouldn't let me enter the MAC and IP and blah blah blah.

Because I can't enter the above information, I can't add this printer as a network printer, which means I am pretty much dead in the water.  Unless I am doing something abominably stupid, which I wouldn't put past me, then I am at a complete loss as to what to do next.

I will pore over the manual yet again during my lunch hour tomorrow in the vain hope that there is something I missed this evening.  If not, well, Ken, let's make a deal.  I will sell it to you for the exact amount I paid for it, and throw in a few sheets of paper already installed in the printer.  The starter toner package is already installed and I have produced maybe 12 pages.   Patricia and I will have to get by with "just" using local printers.  Life is too short to spend it trying to hook up one device that just doesn't want to cooperate.

I suspect that this is far easier in Windows.  Linux is not making my life easier in this particular case.

The funny thing is, I have a few other Samsung laser printers.  Three of them will work literally as soon as I hook them up to a printer with no fiddling or farting around.  Two others were up and running within 10 minutes each.   I only got this one because I wanted to have a network-based printer in my home.  The fool me.

Sorry for the rant.  It is just that I hate it when something is supposed to be easy to set up and turns out to be anything but.

Grr!  Rats!  Phooey!

See you tomorrow, after those IV-laced beverages have worked their way through me.

Bevboy