Re-install a printer no longer supported by HP

Thanks, Carolyn

Indeed my printer is quite old (more than 12 years !), but was still working perfectly before I reformatted the HDD and re-installed macOS High Sierra.

In the meantime, I have carried on investigating and attempting to connect my printer, until I realised a huge number of drivers were in fact sort of embedded in macOS High Sierra, so that I could print.

But this driver lets my printer to work on a simplified way :

• apparently no access to the scanner,
• the printer icon has disappeared from the Dock (displays temporarily while printing, then disappears)
• no access to the evaluation of the ink levels in the cartridges : it says "Information not available"
• ... ?

As I am only discovering now the missing functions, I may happen to find more.

Up to now, I can follow 3 paths :

1. However, looking into System preferences / Printers and Scanners, it states in front of "Type" : "Generic PLC Laser Printer ", which is wrong (mine is an inkjet one + scanner), so the driver selected by the OS is not the right one (in Apple's list, my printer type is listed, so that the OS should use a more suitable one ==> how can I instruct the OS to use the more suitable driver ?
2. On the other hand, I have a back up of my HDD on Time Machine : can I extract the former Apps from HP and re-install it/them ?
3. I can see that another member (Old Toad), has suggested me to see if a open source driver would work

Thank you for your suggestions...

Xavier

Thanks, Old Toad

I have been to the site you mentioned : my printer type is not listed, only more recent ones.

Furthermore, it states :

For multi-function devices, the drivers only support the printer function

and my printer has scanner function as well

I don't know if you can read what I answered to another member (Carolyn), so I copy my reply here :

Indeed my printer is quite old (more than 12 years !), but was still working perfectly before I reformatted the HDD and re-installed macOS High Sierra.

In the meantime, I have carried on investigating and attempting to connect my printer, until I realised a huge number of drivers were in fact sort of embedded in macOS High Sierra, so that I could print.

But this driver lets my printer work on a simplified way :

• apparently no access to the scanner,
• I cannot use some useful settings of my printer (print quality, paper quality, ...)
• the printer icon has disappeared from the Dock (displays temporarily while printing, then disappears), so I cannot connect directly to the printer
• no access to the evaluation of the ink levels in the cartridges : it says "Information not available"
• ... ?

As I am only discovering now the missing functions, I may happen to find more. Up to now, I can follow 3 paths :

1. However, looking into System preferences / Printers and Scanners, it states in front of "Type" : "Generic PLC Laser Printer ", which is wrong (mine is an inkjet one + scanner), so the driver selected by the OS is not the right one (in Apple's list, my printer type is listed, so that the OS should use a more suitable one ==> how can I instruct the OS to use the more suitable driver ?
2. On the other hand, I have a back up of my HDD on Time Machine : can I extract the former Apps from HP and re-install it/them ? But how ?
3. I can see that another member (Old Toad), has suggested me to see if a open source driver would work => it's you, but seems not to work for me.

Thanks for any help

Xavier

Sorry, my mistake : mispelling

This should read "Photosmart 3210" ... (2 mistakes ==> shame on me !)

Thank you for helping me

Xavier