mini-HOWTO: Netgear PS121 print server + Samsung ML1750 + Max OS X + Linux

Posted on Saturday, Dec 4, 2004 at 12:00 AM in Linux

Earlier this year, I bought the inexpensive Samsung ML-1750 black and white laser printer to replace the unused and old color inkjet I had. The printer worked nicely but it didn't get much use since I had it connected to a Windows PC. Instead of sharing it through Samba and requiring a whole PC to be on whenever I needed to print, I picked up the Netgear PS121, a small print server. It has an ethernet port that gets connected to our network hub, and a USB port that hooks up to the printer. Out-of-the-box, as dreaded, it worked seamlessly with Windows but it took a little more effort to work with the alternative operating systems. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but here's what it took to get it all working.

Update the Netgear's Firmware

Netgear has some good, basic support documents for troubleshooting problems on ther PS121 Support Page. You'll want to make sure that your running the latest firmware. The instructions on that page for updating the firmware, which requires a windows machine, are lacking at best. After downloading and unpacking the utility and firmware zip files, you're supposed to run the upgrade utility. Within the upgrade utility, find the printer server on your network, browse to the new firmware file, and hit upgrade. You'll see a message indicating that the ps121's eeprom is being rewritten. You'll get a message indicating success when its done.

Test connections to the PS121

Before proceeding with installing the printer drivers, you want to verify that each computer on your network can connect to the printer server. The easiest way to do so is to bring up a web browser and connect to the IP address of the print server. If it's working, you'll be asked for the print server's password and once authenticated you'll see a page with the header "Netgear SmartWizard Manager, Mini Print Servers". If you can't connect, you'll need to troubleshoot the network connection from that computer to the server

Linux: CUPS and KDE Printing Manager

To print on a linux machine, you'll need CUPS installed on your machine. Details for installing it will vary by distribution but on debian its as simple as "apt-get install cupsys". The KDE Control Center's Printers applet provides a comfortable, GUI for setting up CUPS and installing a printer.

These are the settings I used to add the ML-1750 via PS121 as a printer.:

• Printer Type: Remote LPD Queue
• LPD Host: the IP address of the print server
• LPD Queue: The serve name of the print server, you can get it by connecting to the IP address in a browser and looking at the Server Status page.
• Driver: Samsung ML-1750 Froomatic/pxlmono, you'll need to have all the foomatic packages installed.

That should do it, you can confim by sending a test page to print.

Mac OS X: CUPS & Ghostscript & Samsung GDI

On my Powerbook, things were a little trickier. On the Samsung site, there are newer print drivers for Max OS X that support 10.3.2 and higher which I downloaded and installed. I connected the printer directly via USB and confirmed that it could print that way. When adding the printer as a Remote LPD Queue however, the option to use the Samsung drivers would not appear. Since the ML-1750 doesn't support Postscript, print jobs with that option resulted in wasted paper. CUPS is also installed and available, so using the Samsung-GDI drivers does the trick. Once you've installed the two packages on that page, a number of Samsung printers will appear as options for the driver. The connection settings are identical to the ones for linux above.

Printing from Thunderbird & Firefox, on Linux

While most apps printed, inexplicably I couldn't print webpages or emails from Mozilla apps. The printer would show up as an option and I'd get no errors but also no printouts. Turns out, you can bypass the Mozilla settings and use the Kprint dialog for controlling printer settings by specifying kprinter --stdin as the Print Command. Full instructions are at KDE Printing in Mozilla.

Conclusion

Thanks to CUPS, printing on Linux has come a long way since I last struggled with it. You'll still want to do the research at LinuxPrinting.org to make sure you buy a compatible printer but there is a wide variety of them out there. The fact the Apple has decided to use CUPS on its computers should also convince manufactures to provide CUPS-compatible drivers, and more importantly, serve both Linux and Mac users.

Comments

Brian says

hey man i am new to Mac OS X.3.8 and I cannot get a samsung printer 1750 to print from my xp box. i was hoping you could put more detail into how to install the ghostscript thing and the samsung-GDI drivers as I am doing blind guess and check work at this point.

Posted Friday, Feb 25, 2005 at 07:33 PM

David Meermans says

THANK YOU!!! I have been struggling with the printer for two days. You instructions are the first I have found that work.

I am using Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger and HP LaserJet 3015.

Posted Sunday, Nov 20, 2005 at 03:45 PM

Christos Faloutsos says

EXCELLENT directions - thank you *so much*!
I am using MEPIS 3.3.1,
with a Canon Inkjet S600

Posted Saturday, Jan 14, 2006 at 12:29 AM

Angelo says

TANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!
Your instructions work very fine also with my configuration:
- NetGear PS121 - Firmware Version: 6031
- Kyocera Mita FS 1920

I'm running:
- Linux 2.6.11-gentoo-r3 (2005.0)
- Cups 1.1.23-r1

Posted Tuesday, Jan 24, 2006 at 09:30 AM

Milie Rudolph says

I got a Samsung ML 1750 given to me (used) Bought a new toner cartridge. It doesn't print. I've had it to the shop. The tech checked all the connections inside and out and checked my cables. No problems. But it has a red light on the on line/error indicator and won't print from any application. Any suggestions?

Posted Saturday, May 20, 2006 at 09:24 PM

antonio bernabei says

I received today the PS101 from Netgear and with your help it works after 20 minutes only
undeer cups and mandrake

Posted Friday, Aug 18, 2006 at 03:00 PM

Scott Splavec says

THANK YOU for these instructions. I had to reinstall Ubuntu on my machine and couldn't remember how I'd accomplished this before. Your site reminded me how to do it and I'm back up and running.

Thanks again,
Scott

Posted Saturday, Nov 18, 2006 at 05:22 PM

adam says

HELP! I am trying to connect a Mac (10.4.8) to an HP LJ 3050 using a PS121. Using printer setup utility, I am able to setup a profile using LPD and the driver for the 3050... but without any result. I have upgraded the PS121 to 6033. Printing is great from PCs.

Thanks.

Posted Saturday, Dec 30, 2006 at 09:33 PM

Rob says

I bought the Netgear PS121 for my home office. I have a linksys WRT54GS wireless router, one Windows XP wired PC, one eMAC OSX-4.10, and one Windows XP laptop with wireless access.
For the PCs I got it to work this way: Hook up the print server hardware per the instructions. Install the printer driver and test it via wired USB to make sure it all works. In my case it is an HP PSC2210 All-in-one. In the printer properties under the "PORTS" tab, add a new "standard TCP/IP" port per the Netgear instructions. Accept everything and print.

My Emac was harder. First confirm that you can browse to the print server to confirm you are really connected to it. I downloaded the Gutenprint utility (http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/MacOSX.php3) to get the driver for the printer and installed it. Add a printer in the System preferences -> print & fax dialog (little '+' sign on bottom left). choose IP Printer at the top. Choose "HP Jet Direct - Socket" as the protocol. Enter the IP address for the print server. Under "print using" at the bottom, select the appropriate HP driver. Add it and then print.

Posted Wednesday, Oct 31, 2007 at 02:11 PM

Chris says

Thank you for the info. I had not been able to print since I updated to Ubuntu 7.10 a couple of weeks ago although everything had worked fine in Ubuntu 7.04. After trying all the suggestions on the Ubuntu forums and CUPS I changed my focus to the Netgear PS121 which brought me here. Everything is working fine now. I am bookmarking this in case I need it for the next Ubuntu upgrade.

Posted Saturday, Nov 3, 2007 at 05:21 PM

bob says

Thanks - this was helpful.

I was just trying to install this for a Windows XP. When I installed it it came back with the error "The PS121 doesn't install success. Please restart your computer and try again." I restarted multiple times - no luck.

Knowing that you can go directly to the IP address of the print server to see the configuration info was nice.

My printer - brother DCP-110C didn't seem to want to work off the bat. My printer wasn't on any of the lists from netgear, but it isn't that old.

I wound up creating new port for an IP address and put in the ip address of the print server. That seems to work.

Posted Friday, Dec 28, 2007 at 04:36 PM

Michael says

Thank you for your site! I've got Red Hat Linux Enterprise 5 and it comes with a Printer Config., Foomatic files and CUPS v1.2.x preinstalled. Your site helped me how to understand how to set it up with my ps121 and a ml-1710. Thanks!!!

Posted Sunday, Dec 30, 2007 at 02:12 PM

Michael says

Thank you so much for this posting! I am using the PS121 (connected to a Netgear WGR614 router) with a PC Desktop, PC Laptop and one MacBook (OS 10.4.11). I followed your guide trying to setup the printer on MAC and I was successful!

Specifically, I selected IP Printer, then LPD Protocol for PROTOCOL, then entered IP address of PS121 for ADDRESS, then entered the PS121 Server Name for QUEUE.

Thank you again!

Posted Monday, Jan 28, 2008 at 09:54 PM

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