Barry's Point Of View

It’s no secret that I recently upgraded my life to an Apple MacBook.   The older daughter upgraded last year to an Apple MacBook.  The younger daughter upgrades this week to an Apple MacBook Pro (she needed FireWire for video) which probably means I can retire the old G4 tower.  This meant I needed to finally sort out how to print to the networked Windows-only printers that I have in the house.  Or at least, they were Windows-only when I bought them.

You may have noticed that printing is always a challenge.  This is because printer makers are cheap bastards.  They are always looking for ways to squeeze cost out of the printer – and this usually means pushing functionality back into the software driver.  It’s a rare modern printer that’s even as capable as the old original Apple LaserWriter.

Both of the two printers I own now have unnecessarily complicated drivers on Windows (and Mac too), partly because most of the rendering engine for the printer lives in the driver, not in the printer where it belongs.  What does unnecessarily complicated mean?  There’s parts of the printer drivers that run all the time even when you’re not printing.

Canon MF4370dn

The first up and slightly newer was the Canon MF4370dn, which was relatively easy to set up once I got a new enough version of the drivers.  Originally it shipped without OS X drivers at all.

Later, Canon posted some drivers on their support website, and the V180 drivers don’t work right – they’d usually hang after a page or two.  The UFR_II_V206_MacOSX_us_EN.dmg works great.  Install it, and bonjour finds the printer easily and does the right thing.

I’ve not tried the fax or scan drivers.

Note that this printer tends to get easily confused – and I keep it plugged into a power strip so I can cycle the power on it.

Konica Minolta 2300dl

Next was the Minolta 2300dl.   A quick google will turn up a lot of places that have complicated instructions involving foolzs or the zenographics sdk or the like.  Don’t do that.

The simple instructions are to use the 2430DL mac drivers.  This is good advice, as far as it goes.   However, you MUST also update your firmware to the latest version.   Certain old versions of the firmware in the 2300dl are certain to NOT work right.  You want firmware v2.86 which everyone who has bothered to write about agrees is the only version that works.

Finding the firmware is a pain in the butt.  It took me several months of searching off and on to find it, even knowing what I was looking for.   This printer is now old enough that it’s not at the top of the support tree, if you know what I mean.

The file you want is v286_Update via network.zip and sadly, it will only run on a PC.   I used an old pc with XP and it worked fine.   Some folks have success running on Wine.   Worse, you have to manually edit a .BAT file with a text editor before you run it.   If this frightens you, get the nephew to do it.

1. Download the 2430DL mac driver
2. Download the v2.86 firmware update v286_Update via network.zip if this link does not take you to the right file directly, then enter “magicolor 2300dl” in the Product listbox and firmware in the Document Type / Sub Category listbox
3. Make sure your 2300dl printer has a static IP address
4. Edit the firmware update.bat file, as described in the included pdf
5. run the update.  when it wants you to pause in the middle, wait a few minutes to be sure.   a bricked printer is a bad thing.
6. use a browser to go to your printer and print the config page.
7. Install the driver
8. Install the printer from the system preferences panel
   1. click on the “IP” icon at the top, and make sure you pick the HP JetDirect protocol in the top listbox.  Other settings may work.  these are the ones that work for me.
   2. Enter the IP address of your printer.
   3. in Print Using: choose Select Printer Software…
      • in the listbox that comes up, scroll down to
        KONICA MINOLTA magicolor 2430 DL
   4. for me, if I tried to type a human-readable name, it changed the ip address and vice-versa.  and it also wiped out the driver setting each time.  Check carefully – the Print Using: MUST be set to the 
      KONICA MINOLTA magicolor 2430 DL, and the Address: must be correct before you click add.  These cannot be changed later.
9. Try to print a page.
10. If the print queue monitor stops and shows the printer paused after 20% or so, then you did not update the firmware correctly.  Go back to the top and try again.
11. Afterwards, you can go back to the Print&Fax Systems Preferences to rename this printer so it’s got a suitable name instead of the ip address.   Again, this may have just been an unhappy coincidence for me, but every time I tried to change the name when I was setting it up the first time, the IP address or the driver or both would be wiped out.  The name is not as important as the other two
12. It’s a small irony that the little icon of the printer is the icon of the 2430dl and not the printer you actually have, the 2300dl.