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MacBook wireless connect to Epson

Gave away a perfectly good Canon printer because I couldn't get it to connect through the Airport to the MacBook. Bought a wireless Epson Workforce600.

After several hours installing, uninstalling, re-installing etc. the new Epson, am still not able to see the printer in the EpsonNet app, thus cannot configure it for wireless.

I CAN print using the USB cable, so the Mac (OSX 10.5.8) at least has the drivers installed properly, and I believe is not the problem.
Another several hours later searching this forum, there were a few related posts, but they were not specific enough to do me any good. IE, "I had to remove the Airport, then could continue the installation". What does that mean? pull it out of the wall, un-install, or ?

Does anyone PLEASE have experience with this issue? I'm probably close, and all that's needed is to magically tune a few settings (wild-eyed optomist)on the Mac and Epson to use wireless (that is, the latest drivers have been installed from the web, the Mac shows a bouncing printer icon, but then it comes up with a yellow !). The printers folder shows my documents in the qeue, but they go nowhere.

So, I'm back to the fact that the Mac cannot "see" the Epson wirelessly. I've re-set the Epson back to it's factory config, but still no luck, and that was after trying every option avialable on the Epson control panel. Must admit it was asking for network address, device name, WEP security, and so on, which I don't know. But SHOULD I know that stuff, in order to install a printer? Is that where the answer lies...

There was a really promising post that read: "Installed the printer according to the printed instructions, worked great..." but then it said nothing about the connectivity in wireless.
Is there any Epson tech person out there whose job description it is to monitor these printing issue forums, and send help/offer a suggestion?

Thanks in advance for reading this lengthy thing, and any help would be so greatly appreciated.
signed,
desperately seeking
john

MacBook 2008, Mac OS X (10.5.8), printer Epson Workforce600 wireless

Posted on Oct 13, 2009 2:08 PM

Reply
Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Oct 14, 2009 12:38 PM

Hi John,

"So, I'm back to the fact that the Mac cannot "see" the Epson wirelessly. I've re-set the Epson back to it's factory config, but still no luck, and that was after trying every option avialable on the Epson control panel. *Must admit it was asking for network address, device name, WEP security, and so on, which I don't know. But SHOULD I know that stuff, in order to install a printer? Is that where the answer lies"*

Yes!

Open Airport Utility (Applications / Utilities).

Your Network should be listed on the left side of that window.

Click "Manual Setup". At the top of the next window click Printers. (Make sure printer is turned on.
Click: Update That should allow Airport to connect to the printer.

Also, click Airport at the top of that window. Summary / Base Station / Wireless / Access.
All those tabs tell you the information you need about your network and networked devices.

You can view your network password info under the Base Station tab.

Also, while you have the Airport Utility app open, from the Mac Menu Bar you can click Help for more trouble shooting.

"*Is there any Epson tech person out there whose job description it is to monitor these printing issue forums, and send help/offer a suggestion?"*

We occasionally see techs from HP helping out but I've yet to see an Epson representative. And no, Epson does not monitor these forums. This is a user to user Apple forum only. We are volunteers.








Carolyn 🙂
8 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Oct 14, 2009 12:38 PM in response to johnccole

Hi John,

"So, I'm back to the fact that the Mac cannot "see" the Epson wirelessly. I've re-set the Epson back to it's factory config, but still no luck, and that was after trying every option avialable on the Epson control panel. *Must admit it was asking for network address, device name, WEP security, and so on, which I don't know. But SHOULD I know that stuff, in order to install a printer? Is that where the answer lies"*

Yes!

Open Airport Utility (Applications / Utilities).

Your Network should be listed on the left side of that window.

Click "Manual Setup". At the top of the next window click Printers. (Make sure printer is turned on.
Click: Update That should allow Airport to connect to the printer.

Also, click Airport at the top of that window. Summary / Base Station / Wireless / Access.
All those tabs tell you the information you need about your network and networked devices.

You can view your network password info under the Base Station tab.

Also, while you have the Airport Utility app open, from the Mac Menu Bar you can click Help for more trouble shooting.

"*Is there any Epson tech person out there whose job description it is to monitor these printing issue forums, and send help/offer a suggestion?"*

We occasionally see techs from HP helping out but I've yet to see an Epson representative. And no, Epson does not monitor these forums. This is a user to user Apple forum only. We are volunteers.








Carolyn 🙂

Oct 15, 2009 10:56 PM in response to johnccole

Thank you Carolyn. Im getting closer, since after your suggestions, I now see the name of my printer in the Airport "printers" dialog box.
However, still no print, as the bouncing printer says "printer is offline". The print job shows up in th qeue; the printer is on and 'ready".
Here's the unspoken question: are we setting up the printer to communicate with the Airport by means of a USB cable from the printer plugged into the Airport - [which is in place now]? or, since the printer claims to be "wireless", does it have a receiver built in, similar to the macbook, and that's what were going for? either one is fine with me. But I think the configuration will be very different between those two scenarios.
At any rate, I see "This pane shows printers connected to your Apple wireless device", "share printers over WAN" is enabled, and I have clicked "update", which is now grayed out.
I'm guessing it's now the fault of my printer, not to see the airport from its end.
Please take another crack at a solution.
Thanks,
John

Oct 15, 2009 11:19 PM in response to johnccole

HI John,

*"are we setting up the printer to communicate with the Airport by means of a USB cable from the printer plugged into the Airport"*

Airport is wireless. No USB cable connection necessary.

I just went to the Epson site. Apparently you need to have Rosetta installed in order to make this connection.

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/support/supAdvice.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&type =highlights&noteoid=142163

Insert your Snow Leopard disk. When the Mac OS X Install DVD window opens, click: Optional Installs. Then click: Optional Installs.mpkg An Installer window will open. Click continue. When you get to the "Installation Type" ... select Rosetta and click: Continue.

When the installation is done, restart your Mac.

See if you can print wirelessly.

:::::fingers crossed:::::::::










Carolyn 🙂

Oct 17, 2009 9:55 PM in response to Carolyn Samit

Carolyn Samit wrote:
HI John,

*"are we setting up the printer to communicate with the Airport by means of a USB cable from the printer plugged into the Airport"*

Airport is wireless. No USB cable connection necessary.

I just went to the Epson site. Apparently you need to have Rosetta installed in order to make this connection.

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/support/supAdvice.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&type =highlights&noteoid=142163

Insert your Snow Leopard disk. When the Mac OS X Install DVD window opens, click: Optional Installs. Then click: Optional Installs.mpkg An Installer window will open. Click continue. When you get to the "Installation Type" ... select Rosetta and click: Continue.

When the installation is done, restart your Mac.

See if you can print wirelessly.

:::::fingers crossed:::::::::










Carolyn 🙂
Carolyn Samit wrote:
HI John,

*"are we setting up the printer to communicate with the Airport by means of a USB cable from the printer plugged into the Airport"*

Airport is wireless. No USB cable connection necessary.

I just went to the Epson site. Apparently you need to have Rosetta installed in order to make this connection.

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/support/supAdvice.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&type =highlights&noteoid=142163

Insert your Snow Leopard disk. When the Mac OS X Install DVD window opens, click: Optional Installs. Then click: Optional Installs.mpkg An Installer window will open. Click continue. When you get to the "Installation Type" ... select Rosetta and click: Continue.

When the installation is done, restart your Mac.

See if you can print wirelessly.

:::::fingers crossed:::::::::










Carolyn 🙂
Carolyn Samit wrote:
HI John,

*"are we setting up the printer to communicate with the Airport by means of a USB cable from the printer plugged into the Airport"*

Airport is wireless. No USB cable connection necessary.

I just went to the Epson site. Apparently you need to have Rosetta installed in order to make this connection.

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/support/supAdvice.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&type =highlights&noteoid=142163

Insert your Snow Leopard disk. When the Mac OS X Install DVD window opens, click: Optional Installs. Then click: Optional Installs.mpkg An Installer window will open. Click continue. When you get to the "Installation Type" ... select Rosetta and click: Continue.

When the installation is done, restart your Mac.

See if you can print wirelessly.

:::::fingers crossed:::::::::










Carolyn 🙂

Carolyn,
Again, thanks for helping out with this issue. I would probably give up, were it not for this forum.

Your last answer is based on my macbook using Snow Leopard (OS 10.6), however I said in my earlier post I was using Leopard (OS 10.5.8) +I CAN print using the USB cable, so the Mac (OSX 10.5.8) at least has the drivers installed properly, and I believe is not the problem+

I'm willing to upgrade to 10.6 if that is what it will take to get printing wirelessly. I don't see a prompt asking for Rosetta when I install m printer driver, but am willing to do that too, if it would work with 10.5.8. It's too late tonight to try that, however.

About your response: +Airport is wireless. No USB cable connection necessary+ what I was trying to ask is that I wonder if the problem lies with the printer (not the Mac) and if it does, then it seems that it may be the "wireless" settings in the printer, and so a workaround might be to have the printer rigged as a USB printer, while the Airport serves to receive the wireless signals from the mac, then send them via USB to the printer..

Again, I can print by USB cable from the Mac, and when I try wireless from the Mac, I see the printer, it receives the print job into the qeue, but the bouncing printer goes exclamation mark. In other words, could it be the Mac is doing its job of sending the wireless print signals, but the printer can't deal with them. So I need to change settings on the printer, perhaps.

So for tonight, I'll leave you with those two questions. Please don't give up on me. Life is very busy, so it takes a day plus one to respond.

Oct 18, 2009 11:52 AM in response to johnccole

HI John,

*"could it be the Mac is doing its job of sending the wireless print signals, but the printer can't deal with them. So I need to change settings on the printer, perhaps."*

Try locating the associated preference file. It will read something like this.

com.(manufacturename).plist

~/Library/Preferences.

And delete this file also.

com.apple.airport.preferences.plist

MacintoshHD/Library/Preferences/System Configuration.

Move that file from the System Configuration folder to the Trash.

Restart your Mac.

Sometimes the preference files can become corrupted and need replacing. Your Mac OS X will replace these files for you.








🙂

Message was edited by: Carolyn Samit

Oct 24, 2009 1:54 AM in response to Carolyn Samit

Hello, Carolyn, here I am again.
Thanks for your suggestions, i trashed everything with an Epson name on it, and re-set the printer settings to factory.
Then I re-started and completely re-installed from The Epson disk. What happens is the install process goes smoothly until time for the printer to show up in the EpsonNet software, which it never has. If it did, then the following steps would walk me through the network settings --
SSID, WPA password, printer IP get automatically, and so on. But I can't get there.

At the risk of overkill, I included the Epson help page below, that appears at the point where I get stuck. One interesting note is that it tells me to shut off the computer's wireless access, so I pull the Airport out of the wall.
Another overkill risk i"m taking is including a link to the Epson Workforce600 Network install manual:
http://files.support.epson.com/pdf/wf600/wf600ng.pdf
That manual doesn't say to shut off the wireless access. Oh well.

I'm commtted to getting this thing to work. BTW, I re-checked my cables and connections to the router, and they are working, because I can see lights on the router when I plug in the cables.

My Question for tonight: is there a way to skip the Epson network install software, and go into the Airport to set the printer's IP address, and go into the printer to give it a manual IP address, and will that work?

Sleepless in Walnut Creek
john

Start of Epson Help Page: _______________________________________________________________________
Searches for the printers connected to the network and displays them in the list. Select the target printer to configure from the list, and then click Next.
You can sort the displayed printers by selecting a method from the Sort by drop-down list.

If the target printer is not displayed, click to refresh the list. The color of the printer icon in the list indicates the printer status as follows.
Red:
The printer is not yet configured the network settings.
Yellow:
The printer is successfully configured and connected to the network. However, the client computer is not yet configured to use the printer.
This icon appears only when you are using Windows.
Green:
The client computer and printer are successfully configured and connected to the network. The printer is available to use through the network.

If the target printer is not displayed in the list after clicking , make sure of the following points:
• Your computer's network interface works properly.
• The Ethernet cable is correctly connected between the printer and access point or between the printer and computer. (Except for Method 3)
• Your computer's wireless communication is shut off.
• Firewall or anti-spyware may restrict EpsonNet EasyInstall program. Allow the EpsonNet EasyInstall program to configure the network settings.
• Access restriction may be set on the access point. Register the printer's MAC (Media Access Control) address or IP address on the access point to allow communication. The MAC address can be checked on the printer's control panel or network status sheet.
• The network settings of the printer are changed. Reset the network settings of the printer to the default settings. Refer to the documentation provided with your printer on how to reset the settings.

If you select Method 3 as the Setting Method, shut off the wireless communication once.
For details on how to shut off the wireless communication, see the documentation for the computer's operating system or the wireless device such as the access point or wireless LAN card you are using.

If the printer's IP address has already been set, the printer name may not appear. In that case, identify the printer by its MAC address.
end Epson workforce600 help page

Nov 5, 2009 9:20 PM in response to johnccole

Dear Carolyn,
Hooray. I'm writing to say I got the thing working. Some of the confusion was mine, but a lot of it was Epson's too.
After taking a break from beating my head against the wall trying to install this printer on my wife's MacBook, i decded to install it on my daughters PC laptop. Went through all the same drills as before, but this time when it didn't work and I was reading the troubleshooting for the umpteenth time, this caught my eye:

+Cannot communicate on a wired LAN+
+Make sure that the wireless setting on the printer’s control panel is set to Disable+.
+Select Setup from the Home menu, select Network Settings, choose Wireless+
+LAN Setup, and select Disable. If it is set to Enable, the printer will not+
+communicate using a wired connection.+
Now who would think it applied to me, since I was settig up a printer WIRELESSLY. Then I realized of course the first time you set up the printer it has to be wired so that the computer/setup software can tell the printer the wireless settings, then later you pull out the cable once the setup is done. But since I'd tried everything else, I tried it -- didn't work. So I read further:
+The printer does not appear in the Add Printer window (Mac OS X)+
+Make sure the printer driver was installed correctly and that your computer’s+
+TCP/IP settings are configured correctly.+
Then I re-ran the driver install from the disk, only this time I decided to try "Set up a new computer on this printer"... and since I hadn't tried it before, I did that. Only in retrospect did I realize that was the correct setup mode. But it still didn't work.
However, I did get further, I could see the printer name in "EpsonNet" confuguration. But since it didn't actuall print, I thought it had the wrong printer port, as I had been able to solve HP printer setup problems that way on my PC at work. But I didn't see any mention of ports in the software, so this time, since I knew the printer's network setup menu by heart by this time, I remembered seeing an IP address in there. I went back to it, wrote it down, and then re-installed the driver so I could get to the Add a Printer dialog (I know there must have been an easier way), and this time added a new printer in which I set the IP address the printer said it was -- rather than try to tell the printer what it's IP was, from the driver setup software, which was not possible, and although the Troubleshooting mentioned the computer's IP, not the printers'. And, ...IT WORKED.
Flushed with success, I next went back to the MacBook, performed the same steps, and it worked TOO.
So thanks to you Carolyn, and oh yes, to Dougv71 from Sep 25 2005 (if youre out there Doug...) for this other tidbit, which worked for me:
+The other feature that it says does not work on the Mac is the ability to access memory cards over the network connection. This too is easily done by selecting Go/Connect to Server in the Finder and then entering smb:// followed by either the IP address or the name of your printer+
Let's hope the Epson tech manual writers add this info into their material, in a way that can be followed step by step by folks who don't have a lot computer experience.
John 🙂

Nov 5, 2009 9:42 PM in response to johnccole

1. Disable "wireless" on the printer's menu
2. run the setup software using "Set up a new computer on this printer" mode
3. Get the IP address from the printer, and enter it into the "Add a printer" dialog, you have to click around the text boxes to find the proper place to enter it.
And a bunch of other good help from Carolyn Samit, read the thread.
Are you listening, Epson?

MacBook wireless connect to Epson

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