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Where has Bonjour gone?

With the gradual progress "forward" with OS migrations, some things seem to be getting more and more difficult. Can someone please explain to me why setting up printing is becoming so difficult.


I have a home network with an ethernet switch, several devices connected to it including AppleTalk enabled high end laser printer from FujiXerox and a lesser multi-function device from Brother. When I try to add a printer, nothing appears in the default dialogue. Does this mean that the computer no longer has a sniff on the local network and return real possibilities that it has found.


Once upon a time AppleTalk did the job, beautifully. That seems to have disappeared.

Bentour also did a similar but less elegant job but I can't seem to find this now.


I have to manually go through the steps of firstly identifying a specific IP address for a printer on the network and add it via a manual hands-on approach. It's just as hard to add a printer drive to a Mac desktop now as it always has been on a Windows OS machine. Congratulations to Apple Engineers - you made printing universally difficult on all platforms - standardised as they say in the trade.


Can anyone offer suggestions to help fix this problem or do I need to throw away $15,000 worth of printers and get some new poor quality replacement whose protocols will also stop working in a few years?


Cheers.

Posted on Dec 12, 2017 7:10 PM

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Posted on Dec 24, 2017 4:53 AM

Just when you thought things were "Fixed", problems still emerged that meant printing was not working again. I tried deleting and re-installing a fresh OS and thankfully I have a Time Machine 3TB backup running reliably on my network and this gave me back all my files.


Reinstalled printer software and still no printing. Had a guess at changing the interface from Internet Printing Protocol IPP to HP JetDirect Socket and it then seemed to make a correct connection and print. No more silly errors meaning that the interface to the printer was faulty. My printer is a Fujixerox but must share a common protocol set with HP.


Oh bring back the automated days when a computer could sniff a network and printers declared themselves!


This long hand method seems to work however and at the end of the day, that is all that matters.


Merry Christmas. 🙂

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Question marked as Best reply

Dec 24, 2017 4:53 AM in response to Peter Marsh

Just when you thought things were "Fixed", problems still emerged that meant printing was not working again. I tried deleting and re-installing a fresh OS and thankfully I have a Time Machine 3TB backup running reliably on my network and this gave me back all my files.


Reinstalled printer software and still no printing. Had a guess at changing the interface from Internet Printing Protocol IPP to HP JetDirect Socket and it then seemed to make a correct connection and print. No more silly errors meaning that the interface to the printer was faulty. My printer is a Fujixerox but must share a common protocol set with HP.


Oh bring back the automated days when a computer could sniff a network and printers declared themselves!


This long hand method seems to work however and at the end of the day, that is all that matters.


Merry Christmas. 🙂

Dec 12, 2017 7:50 PM in response to Peter Marsh

I should have followed my intuition earlier and just gone with what I know.


I fixed the IP address on the printer console, changed this in my software install to specify an IP address and voila - it prints. Works now with both printers.


It seems Apple has done away with interrogation of the local network and so you have to fix those items yourself. Doesn't hurt really because then you know that you have to look for, specify a unique IP address and make the connection - all manually.


I guess because we live in a more connected world, the local connectivity has to get a little harder. Faced with the choice between internet access and simplified local printing, the former gets my vote every time.

Where has Bonjour gone?

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