I have cable conneted my Iphone to Brother DCP-7030 printer but thewphone does not find the printer

Hi,

Unfortunately, a direct USB cable printer connection from an iPhone is not supported. Also, the Brother DCP-7030 is not a supported AirPrint printer.

If you have access to a Mac computer running OS X 10.9 Mavericks or newer, with compatible printer drivers for the DCP-7030 (https://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadtop.aspx?c=as_ot&lang=en&prod=dcp7030_all), one possibility may be to try a third-party utility called Printopia (https://www.decisivetactics.com/products/printopia/). The Mac with the USB-connected DCP-7030 would then act as a print server, allowing printing from an iPhone via a Wi-Fi network.

That printer looks to be most of twenty years old based on the publication dates for the associated documentation, and is lacking both Wi-Fi and AirPrint support.

That printer is intended for wired printing connections from Mac and Windows.

Access to that printer from wireless devices is going to be challenging, at best.

iPhone supports AirPrint, or vendor-provided wireless printing apps, and does not support USB printing.

As mentioned above, Printopia is going to be about your best choice, and you’ll need to keep the Mac hosting that printer running.

If you do decide to replace that printer (considerations), absolutely get one with AirPrint support for access from Apple devices.

>I think I will continue with the usb connection to my PC.

A Windows PC, not a Mac? If so, if absolutely necessary, a workaround could perhaps be to save (whenever possible, for example, a web page in Safari) as a PDF on the iPhone, and then transfer the PDF using an appropriate method to the Windows PC for printing.

@Jan Hedlund

FWIW, I had a spare Raspberry Pi 0W laying around, so I gave that referenced article a try, and setting up the CUPS print server works just fine. This particular RPi is wireless only, but I'm sure any RPi would work just as well. The print server is accessible from iPhones, Macs, Windows, & Linux-based PCs. Not sure about an Android device, as I don't have one.

Unfortunately, I don't have the OP's specific printer, so I can't verify that would work.

In the early days of AirPrint there were a few utilities for Windows (including one called FingerPrint), but the situation today seems to be unclear. Someone else here may know more.

Also, a Raspberry Pi print server (Linux) could perhaps be another way. I have not tried this, but a post by Techguyuk (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255164131?answerId=259822350022#259822350022) may be of interest to you.

peterfromringwood wrote:

I thought I'd take a look at Printopia but I see it only works with a Mac. Is there a Windows equivalent?

Maybe this? https://www.windowsdigitals.com/airprint-windows-11-10-shared-printer/

Thank you, Tesserax. I have a Raspberry Pi (one of the first models) somewhere, and will check whether it can be used for a similar experiment with a USB printer as soon as time permits.