Printer problems

Canon is showing a driver for 10.7 on its web site here:

https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/support/details/printers/suppo rt-inkjet-printer/mx-series/pixma-mx490?subtab=downloads-drivers

it is called a CUPS Driver. CUPS has been the been the built-in Print spooler for MacOS for a long time. Apple was already using CUPS, and bought the CUPS software from Easy Software Products about the time of MacOS 10.2. CUPS is already in place in your Mac -- there is nothing additional you need to do (except install the canon Driver).

A scanner Driver is also showing just below that.

If Canon no longer provides printer drivers that supports OS X Lion with this particular printer, your options are extremely limited. At best, you could try a printer driver that is similar to this model and not be able to use all of the printer's functions. At worst, no driver will resolve this for you and you will need to upgrade your desktop.

Post Exact Printer model number, please.

Dumb printers MUST have a driver.

Smart printers may be able to use Generic Drivers.

Ok, that did not work. I do not have Century Link Router, so I have no button to push.

Can you ignore that advice and enter the SSID manually, and then enter the password?

When you are done, you will need to delete the Printer on the Mac and add it again on the Mac.

You should see it showing when you click the Add button.

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If you ask the right leading questions, you can get help for almost anything here. I once answered a question about where to get used truck parts in the area West of Boston, and participated in interesting discussions about lead in batteries and Colonial window glass.

The Printer needs a few tidbits of information before it can join your network:

1) which network-name should it be joining?

2) what is the password to get onto the Network?

3) How should the Printer get its IP address to participate as a station on your Network? {DHCP, Manual, other}

These are VERY difficult to tell the Printer until it is already on your network. So most Printers have a way to manually enter them using the built-in display and input buttons directly on the Printer. Printers without a display and buttons may REQUIRE that you first connect via USB and use their setup Utility to enter those items.

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For good long-term stability, manually assigning an IP address than i similar to the others on your Network is best, but not required at this time. You ant it to be the same in all but the last octet, and less than .254. It also needs to be "out of line" or much higher in the automatic numbering scheme os that its IP address will not be given out by accident to another device.

Often, your Router will give itself .1, it will pass out addresses starting with .2, your cable-TV box will just Grab something like .100, and you can add your printer anywhere above that like .200

if the stuff directly above is just "word-salad" to you, do not worry about it now.

That printer has got to have some of the WORST setup instructions I have ever seen. This seems to be the only part that applies:

(drag and drop on Preview to make larger.)

In step 3, they give you the only bit that is helpful: "Follow the Instructions ...[on the printer's display]"

They seem to be looking for SSID/BSSID instead of Network-Name. Hold down the Option key on the keyboard on your Mac while you click on the Wi-Fi Icon to get a display like this that shows BSSID, among other stuff.

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If you have both with no different network-names and no Ethernet cable between them, they fight with each other (and every other Router in your neighborhood). If you give them the SAMR+E network-name and password, they become components of ONE network, and can improve Wi-Fi performance, especially if the are cabled together as well.

For reasons way beyond my pay grade I opened the iPad and the canon icon magically found the mx490 printer! So I tested its output by printing a photo of my grandson. Not a very good print but, nonetheless received a photo!

Go figure!

You may have done one of:

• set the printer up to be station on your network

• used the Printer's "ad-hoc" ability to act as a base station and remove stuff directly from your devices (as if it were a Router) and print them.

back to the Printer, and canon setup:

2. use < or > to select a connection method:

Wireless LAN

follow the instructions shown to select your NEW SSID/Network-name

DO NOT choose "Use only AirPrint or Google Cloud Print"

they will tell you how to enter the new password, and you enter it here as well.

Then your Printer should be ready to be a station on your spiffy new network.

Most setups use the more mnemonic term "Network-name". Just enter the network-name you see in the Option-Wi-Fi display into the SSID field for the Printer Setup.

If they are instead looking for the numeric BSSID, that is shown in the Option-Wi-Fi display. Its use is very unlikely.