[Justin Polin]

Hello all,

I recently purchased the Dell 3100cn Laser Color printer, and I've been having problems getting it to print. At first, when I tried to "Add Printer" in the Printer Setup Utility it failed to recognize the printer on the USB port. A few minutes later, however, the printer randomly appeared on the printer list, but with no indication of a USB connection. Whenever I try to print, I get an error message that says "Printer not responding." Does anyone know what is going on here?

Thanks,
Justin Polin

Computer Setup:

Dual 1.8 ghz G5
Mac OS 10.3.8

[mbryda]

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,

Problem #1 - It's a Dell. Nothing they make is worth anything at all. Sorry - Dell makes junk, always have, always will. (This coming from a veterain PC user)

Problem #2 - Since it's a Dell, it probably doesn't support anything but Windows. So, you're going to be SOL. They are Lexmark printers, but like eveerthing else Dell, the drivers, ROMS, etc are all bastardized to Dell's "specifications", so it's going to be an excersise in futility to get it to work.

Return that POS and get an HP, Samsung, Brother (pretty much same engines as HP), Okidata, etc. which supports OSX. Last month's MacWorld had a good review of the ~$1k laser printers.

[Justin Polin]

Too bad. So the printer isn't compatible, even if all the documentation claims that it does work with Macs (both 9.x and 10.x)?

Originally posted by mbryda:
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,

Problem #1 - It's a Dell. Nothing they make is worth anything at all. Sorry - Dell makes junk, always have, always will. (This coming from a veterain PC user)

Problem #2 - Since it's a Dell, it probably doesn't support anything but Windows. So, you're going to be SOL. They are Lexmark printers, but like eveerthing else Dell, the drivers, ROMS, etc are all bastardized to Dell's "specifications", so it's going to be an excersise in futility to get it to work.

Return that POS and get an HP, Samsung, Brother (pretty much same engines as HP), Okidata, etc. which supports OSX. Last month's MacWorld had a good review of the ~$1k laser printers.

[mbryda]

Originally posted by Justin Polin:
Too bad. So the printer isn't compatible, even if all the documentation claims that it does work with Macs (both 9.x and 10.x)?

According to:
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/P...;page=external

It says nothing about supporting Macs.

Either way, Dell is the last place to shop for anything computer related.

[lightusr]

The user manual I looked at on their site did indeed say it was Mac compatible and it looks like a decent printer but that's beside the point. Your question was about why it said "not responding" when trying to print to that. I see it's a networkable printer, have you tried just adding it as a networked printer instead of trying the USB cable? It almost sounded like you had it plugged into both your network and usb at the same time.

It should work pretty seamlessly, the docs just say to install a ppd for OS X so the problem doesn't appear to be driver or "dell" related. Hopefully my response is more on target instead of "It's a dell. Nothing dell makes is worth anything."

[5by5]

I recently purchased the same printer. Not sure if this will help but I just plugged it into the USB port on my Airport Base station and then ran the Printer Setup Utility. It found it without a problem and has been printing like a champ.

The manual says there are print drivers on the CD but the should not be needed if you're running OSX since it uses a generic script.

5by5