How to save an old printer from the e-waste pile with a Raspberry Pi

This afternoon, I picked up a very nice Brother duplexing color laser printer, which someone was kindly giving away, because it didn't work with a current Apple thing.

But it works perfectly with Linux and CUPS, out of the box. With open standard generic open source drivers. And toner is priced affordably, because no DRM.

I've done this before and is definitely worth a shot with most printers, but despite being such a simple goal it can get surprisingly in the weeds.

I did eventually find success with an old Brother laser printer using the brlaser driver and a RPi3, but not before spending at least a week troubleshooting why all but the simplest print jobs would fail. Getting a reliable wifi connection took even longer.

Ok, but don't kid yourself that you're saving money, you can buy pnp network print servers for cheaper than just a pi.

Although it's cheaper to just buy a printer with network capabilities from the start and know that it'll never be obsolete as long as lpr and PS or PCL keep going.

We need a tax on companies with sales over $1 Billion per year whose new version of software creates ewaste.

If Windows 11 does not support the printers that Windows 10 did, then Microsoft should pay $1 per pound of waste they create.

I have to spend $300 on a new printer, and Microsoft should pay $3 in taxes to deter them from wasting good printers.

This is a wonderful way to keep older devices working indefinitely. The idea that a printer could in any way be obsolete is ridiculous on its face: can it print something that humans can read and otherwise use? Of course it can.

The same is true of audio gear. Avid / Digidesign and Microsoft would have us believe that audio gear somehow becomes obsolete, and there are lots of fanbois who don't understand driver programming who say that Progress Will Be Held Up if people have to spend countless hours, days, weeks or months maintaining drivers for older devices. It's absolute horse hockey. If Apple can sell audio files with DRM that still work twenty years later, and if twenty year old iPods can work with modern computers today, I think Microsoft could, too, if they wanted, although they won't because it financially benefits them to not support things they've sold you in the past.

Personally, I started using an ImageWriter II dot matrix printer when a new Epson printer (less than six months old) refused to work because it hadn't been used in a month. If I need something fancier than an ImageWriter, I'll find an old printer like this, something that'll work even if one of the colors is out, and run CUPS to talk to it.

For a second I thought we had a breakthrough in getting custom firmware for printers, namely HP. But yes CUPs is awesome!

next step would be to flash the printer with linux firmware . I'm guessing it had as much cpu as a pi zero