[ghettoflow21]

Hi guys! I'm new here. I just bought a black MacBook, and have recently set up wireless with the Linksys WRT54G. I don't know how I got connected or whatnot, but I don't think there are any passwords or security. Anyways, I have a PC that is wired that has a USB printer. I want to print wirelessly with my MacBook to the USB printer. How would I go about doing this? Thanks in advance!!

[SWFan]

Make sure on the Windows machine that the Print and File sharing protocol is installed and running. Then simply right-click on the printer and turn on "sharing." OS X should see it when you go into the printer setup and it does its auto-search thing.

Keep in mind, all the computers need to be in the same IP range. So each computer would need to be something like 192.168.1.xxx. The most common problem I see are networks that are segmented wired and wireless. The wired units get IP's from one router and the wireless it dishing out its own IP's. So in those situations you will have problems because the wired computers might get IPs in this range, 192,168.1.xxx and the wireless might be 192.168.0.xxx.

[mib3000]

SWFan wrote:

Keep in mind, all the computers need to be in the same IP range. So each computer would need to be something like 192.168.1.xxx. The most common problem I see are networks that are segmented wired and wireless. The wired units get IP's from one router and the wireless it dishing out its own IP's. So in those situations you will have problems because the wired computers might get IPs in this range, 192,168.1.xxx and the wireless might be 192.168.0.xxx.

I think this may be a problem on my network. I have a lynksis router BEFSR41 vers 2. This I have connected an airport base station (for my two roaming mac laptops) and a wired desktop (G4). How do I check for this and how do I correct it if I find it is a problem?

[ghporter]

ghettoflow21, USB printers are notoriously hard to share, and when you share from one platform to another over a network (printer connected by USB to a PC when you're trying to print from your Mac), it gets harder. There are dedicated USB network print servers, but they do not always work, and pretty much for the same reason-USB printer drivers don't always support networked printing. It would be important for us to know which brand and model of printer you are trying to get working for us to be able to say whether you're stuck or not.

SWFan's point is a good one, but with the WRT54G it's pretty much guaranteed that wired and wireless computers will all be on the same subnet.

mib3000, if you just plugged the ABS into the router, then I can almost guarantee that the wireless computers are NOT on the same subnet (or "IP range") as the wired computers. But there's a simple way to make that work for you.

The AirPort Base Station and the AirPort Extreme Base Station are routers, and they do all the functions of a router in addition to providing wireless connections. So what you want to do is turn off those functions-you have a wired router already. Using the AirPort Admin Utility, go to the Network tab and UNCHECK the "share a single IP address" box. That's it. It turns off the router functions and makes the base station act only as a wireless access point. Automatically (unless you've done some odd stuff) your whole network will now be on the same subnet, though you may have to tell your laptops to renew their addresses through the AirPort preferences pane.

[mib3000]

Very cool. Thanks ghporter. I'll give it a try.

[mib3000]

Wow!! Such a simple fix. Thank you ghporter. I now have all the computers communicating and the printer shared accross the network. Forget the silly print server!!

Although it would be nice to have the printer available all the time, not just when the main desktop is awake. For that I will have to get different printer.

Thanks again.

Ghetto, I hope you get your problem fixed!

[ghporter]

mib, glad I could help.

Ghettoflow, how are you doing with your problem?