Modern printer - Old computer with Windows 2000 - Any suggestions? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: AndersJ
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2017, 01:24:53 pm
content: I have a new Brother MFC-J6930DW ink jet color printer.It should not, according to the documentation, run on Windows older than Vista.Despite that, I have however installed it and successfully printed on XP.Windows 2000 however complains about the driver installation exe’s not being proper 32 bit programs.I´m pretty locked inte W2K för legacy support reasons.It would be nice if the printer could be used.Is there a way around this W2K incompatibility problem?

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2017, 01:33:28 pm
content: Does the printer have something else besides USB that is not supported before XP ?I don't know what protocols the printer can handle but if it can handle PCLx, HP-GLx , or some other universal printing language like that there should be some ways to get around it by printing to a file, then copy the file to a modern computer and let that one sent it directly to the printer with a command prompt copy command or other means ?

author: ddavidebor
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2017, 01:40:55 pm
content: Setup a CUPS server, I am sure somewhere on the web there is something that will connect to it from windows 2K.

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2017, 01:43:35 pm
content: Quote from: AndersJ on December 10, 2017, 01:24:53 pmTry "generic" PCL drivers, one by one until some perhaps works. First one to try would be Brother Mono Universal Printer (PCL) driver.Actually you are consulting wrong forum. Here we talk about transistors and resistors, not Windows drivers forprinters. This one would be much better choice:https://www.printerforums.net/forums/brother.19/Contacting Brother support also could be worth to consider.

author: C
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2017, 02:04:11 pm
content: If you want Windows 2000 to use new stuff, easy thing to do is connect the computer to a network.This gives you network storage & network printers.If the Brother MFC-J6930DW is normally connected to a newer windows computer, share the printer on this computerIf your windows computer complains when you connect to this shared printer then you need to put a linux computer on network.The linux computer connects to Brother network shared printer and then re shares the printer again. Linux becomes a translator.Just about any old computer can run linux.You could even put virtualbox on new computer and run a copy of linux in virtualbox.Even a raspberry pi could work, it's linix.EDITsamba lets windows computers use network storage & printers on linux systems.CUPS is the linux sharing of printers

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2017, 02:04:52 pm
content: Quote from: ddavidebor on December 10, 2017, 01:40:55 pmAdd samba to that and Win2k will "just work". It's only a matter of finding a driver that'll do what you want it to do.

author: nali
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2017, 02:17:25 pm
content: According to Brother's spec it's a PCL6 and BR-Script3 which is presumably a PostScript clone. So you could try obtaining the PPD file and using it with a generic Adobe PostScript driver.If you can share it from a Linux box, Brother have specific instructions setting up with CUPS/Ghostscript on their support page -http://support.brother.com/g/s/id/linux/en/instruction_prn5.html?c=us&lang=en&prod=mfcj6930dw_us_eu_as&redirect=on

author: jaycee
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2017, 11:25:08 pm
content: Just use a generic PCL5 printer driver from within Windows 2000, and it should work fully.Another alternative, if the printer driver's installer executable is the problem (Win2K deprecated 16 bit apps, which some old InstallShield installers use - XP and later contain builtin workarounds for it.. get something like 7zip, extract the self extracting archive .exe, and then use Device Manager to install the drivers manually from the files that pop out

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 27, 2017, 06:34:06 pm
content: Quote from: nali on December 10, 2017, 02:17:25 pm^^^^ this. With its PostScript support, damned near any OS in existence can print to it in some way or another. The aforementioned PPD should enable the printer’s functions.