MBAir Dell Printer: 'Unable to communicate' but it CAN.......

Well this was a rabbit-hole. Flushed with success I feel obliged to write it up.....

After much searching and reading in places I'm not qualified to frequent, and much straining of the grey-matter, it seemed if I could get something called a PPD file for the 3110cn I might have a chance at something.

I was able to dig this out of the Windows print driver directory and stick it on my Air and into CUPS, and thought maybe then it might work as a generic PS printer. Then added in Printers and Scanners and it recognised it as Dell 3110cn using IPP.

But 'Unable to communicate' on 'OK' and after Completing wouldn't work. Getting way too familiar with 'Square One' at this point.

More reading and to the Dell Manual of yesteryear about setting up as a network printer, TCP/IP adding ports and all that jazz having some resonance when I first added on Windows networked machines. And which stated to use LDA......

So back to CUPS and added using LDA instead of IPP choosing the PPD I'd brought along from the Windows driver install and printed a Test Page.

Added in Printers and Scanners using LDA and it completed adding with no 'Unable to communicate' fail.

Then, to print from an app..... And it insisted on choosing the MPF tray, and ignored me when I added a sheet of paper. All the printer settings (in the printer itself), using the Windows machines, are set to select automatically and always use Tray 1 as default not MPF unless you open the MPF tray first (standard I would have thought).

Much rummaging in the Printer Setup Settings in the app (was using Edge browser at the time) and disabled MPF and saved as Default settings to print to Tray 1. Prints to Tray 1.

Success. The price being a sore head. What I've yet to confirm is whether this can be forced as a Global Setting or if I'll have to do it in every app I want to print from.

To be frank I can't say I understand what's going on with CUPS or behind the scenes, and whether if I had just bypassed that altogether, and could have selected the PPD file through Printers and Scanners and it would have worked if I'd used LDA there instead in the first place.

But the long and short of it seems to me to be that, despite being a PS printer, it doesn't work using the generic PS drivers in Monterey, but it does using LDA - if you supply it with the correct PPD file which can be obtained from the Windows Print Driver package/install if you know and know where to look.

Those who know this stuff inside out may be laughing their heads off at my stumblings, but hey what do I care, I'm printing off my Air to a Dell printer without a Dell MacOS driver which seems to be an almost unprecedented achievement from all I've read!

Given the vast quantity of problems of similar ilk with Samsung, HP, and numerous others I'm quite surprised that 'copy the PPD file over from a Windows driver installation and use that' doesn't appear - well almost nowhere really when searching.

Hope it helps some other tortured soul.

Best,

Hello HWTech and thank you very much for your assistance which is most helpful.

I've pursued your suggestions, and ask for your further indulgence if I may.

(it is at the ceiling of my paygrade, but trying my best....)

You are correct that it is an old printer, meets my simple needs, and wishing to avoid replacing mainly so as not to have to configure a new one on several machines just to make it work on one Mac! But if I must I will.

I think you may be correct that 3000/10/30 drivers would work as I have a recollection of using previously for some reason. However, "Theoretically you should be able to see the CUPS & Gutenprint drivers when clicking the drop down list box for manually selecting drivers..."

When I drop down menu there are a bunch of Brother printer drivers which I believe are there because I installed a Brother printer to the Macbook Air, but there are very few others (a couple of Epsom, OKI, Kyocera but no Dell.

"not sure if they are all still supplied with later versions of macOS." - from this and reading up - it seems Apple have moved responsibility to the manufacturers, am I correct to conclude that you have an older version of MaxOS and thus see 3000/10/30 drivers and this is why I don't? Hence not an option for me as there's nothing at Dell (the old MacOS driver package for 3110cn fails to complete installation). So, I'm guessing those drivers you see aren't forward compatible with Monterey and Dell aren't updating is the reason I'm stuffed on that.

I looked at GutenPrint and the list shows Dell 3110 & 30 but with an addendum about being 'automatically generated' in the list (these are the only 2 Dell drivers listed, and none of the other hundreds listed had this addendum so didn't fill me with confidence) and given the magnitude of the exercise for a simpleton I took a look at CUPS instead.

I enabled the web interface and made 'some progress'. I was uncertain regarding the various 'backends' but moved forward choosing the IPP path, and the 'Generic' option. Wasn't sure if I should be using ipp. prefix for the URL (which it fills in by default) or http:// followed by URL or just the ip address itself, and the explanations were a bit Greek to me. So I thought I'd ask..... Trial and error for all the possibilities would take an age so any guidance appreciated.

I did get the CUPS setup to 'complete' however using generic PCL driver, saying it was connected in the log. I was able to ping it from Terminal. But printing a Test Page from the CUPS Menu options 'showed up' in the log as a Job but didn't print.

In Print from within an App, the 'new' CUPS printer appears, but unlike the ones I added producing the 'unable to communicate' msg upon creation which have green lights, this one has an orange light :-( and won't print there either. When I query the Options and Supplies the previous ones give a button to display the printer's webpage which works. The CUPS one doesn't bring up a button and fails.

So, perhaps progress in that I got connected in CUPS and could ping in Terminal, but still can't print either from within CUPS test page or in an app. Given the description in CUPS that ipp should give at least some functionality with almost any printer it seems likely I'm making a selection error because I'm not familiar with the language used in order to make the right choices.

I'll keep investigating myself but thought I'd reach out, update and to say thanks

Seems so near but yet so far!

Kind regards,