Canon iP4500 or MX310 with Airport Extreme?

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Level 1

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Canon iP4500 or MX310 with Airport Extreme?

Hi,

I have a Canon MX310 that I set up to print wirelessly through my Airport Extreme router running Tiger. Just upgraded to Leopard, and decided to use my Canon iP4500 with the Airport so that I would maintain all of the scanning/faxing abilities of the 310 as a local printer.

I installed the most recent driver from Canon, and the iP4500 is listed as connected in the AirPort Utility. However, when I try to print a little yellow ! appears next to the printer and nothing prints. The error is 306 (communication error), if that helps.

I see others have managed to get this printer to work via AirPort. Any ideas? Would I be better off to hook the MX310 to the router and use the iP4500 locally? Anything special I have to do after installing new drivers? I did reinstall the printer, but this didn't work.

The printers both work fine when directly connected to USB ports. And the AirPort Base Station seems to be working fine otherwise.

Please help! I am new to Mac, and really just want to find a way to print from my MacBook 🙂

Trisha

iMac, MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.1), Canon MX310, Canon iP4500

Posted on Jan 5, 2008 10:33 PM

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Answer 1

Jan 6, 2008 10:14 AM in response to TrishaJ

This can be really confusing in that many users think you can simply plug in your printers and they work. I am sorry to say this is not always the case.
When a communications error occurs it tells me that the printer is not communicating to your computer or visa versa.
Isolating the exact problem sometimes requires a number of steps to fix this problem.
Shut your computer clear OFF do the same with the printer, clear OFF you may need to unplug the power adapter of the printer.
Leave everything off for a minute or so. Make sure your USB is plugged in and then start the Printer. wait until it is completely finished starting up then Start your computer and again you have to wait for it to boot up completely. Now try and print, if you can't print yet it could be a driver problem.
Again this may require you to use a 3rd party driver especially when a all in one won't scan.
There are a handfull of 3rd party drivers out there and some are better than others and you may have to try more than one of them.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Gimp+Print&btnG=Search
And here are more.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=3rdparty+print+drivers&btnG=GoogleSearch
You might want to remember to restart both your printer and computer when adding drivers and read the instructions throughly.
Don

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Answer 2

Jan 8, 2008 9:23 AM in response to TrishaJ

I was not able to print through my airport express station to the Canon Pixma MX310. I updated the firmware on the Airport Express from 6.2 to 6.3. Now I am able to print through the Airport express with the MX310 USB attached to the Airport Express. I'm not sure if this is relevant to your problem, but thought I would share it just in case.

Website for Airport Express update:
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/airportexpressfirmwareupdate63formacosx.h tml

I believe there is also an update for Airport Extreme.

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Answer 3

JWurzak

Level 1

2 points

Feb 17, 2008 8:39 AM in response to RiverChild

Hello,

I was having issues printing wirelessly from the Canon MX310 with AEBS and Mac Book Pro and 10.5.2. I resolved the issue by downloading the non-cups driver from Canon's website. Install the driver -- System Prefs -- Printer -- + -- Select Canon Pixma MX 310 (bonjour) -- add driver, then under "Print Using" select "IJ Printer" .

Thats what worked for me... hope it will help some others out!

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Answer 4

Mar 20, 2008 9:02 AM in response to JWurzak

THANKS BOTH OF YOU! It worked just like you said- once I upgraded my firmware on my AE AND then went to system preferences it worked fine-
I had an HP all in one and yes, it appears the multi-function items like scanning, need to be directly connected via USB but this is great-
I would be lost without people like you-
Best-

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