Old Ricohs and Chromebook

[mikadonovan]

Hey, All. I hope everyone is having a good day. We were contacted by the IT guy of a school system we service, and he said that Google docs was dropped from Chromebooks, and now there is no printing to some of the older equipment (MPC 400/ MPC3300). The newer '03s are printing fine. I intend to update firmware on these older models, but one of the c400's we placed in the last six months, and I know the firmware on it was the latest and greatest. Have any of you guys run into this issue?

Note: after doing a little research, I see that after 5 years or so, updates to a Chromebook cease, and this may be the issue.

[ThePomqueteer]

Re: Old Ricohs and Chromebook

How were they printing to the older machines before? First thing that comes to mind is PostScript. A quick google search seems to indicate that Chromebooks now use PPD drivers, so maybe the older ones don't have Postscript support?

If thats the case, and I'm not sure if this would work as I'm not familiar with Chromebooks but if you can use any PPD driver, I would try the Gutenprint driver, that's what a lot of people with Macs use to print to older Ricohs without PostScript.

[mikadonovan]

Re: Old Ricohs and Chromebook

I haven't met with him yet, so I don't know any particulars. They have printed from Chromebooks for years now, and if they can't print online from Google docs, maybe they can go into offline mode and just print directly from the computer. Dunno for sure as I am not hugely familiar with that OS.

[ThePomqueteer]

Re: Old Ricohs and Chromebook

I'm thinking when he says Google Docs he means Google Cloud Print through Google Docs, which was (Cloud Print) deactivated on Jan 1st 2021. I don't know too much about it either but I'm pretty sure you could add older printers to Google Cloud Print through a server piece, which I'm guessing was through a PCL driver which is why it worked before with the old machines. Once Cloud Print was discontinued they introduced native printing from Chrome OS using PPD which is probably why the older machines no longer work. Of course I'm assuming a lot of things here so take it with a grain of salt.

I'm currently trying to get a Chrome OS emulator set up to test Gutenprint, I will try to report back with the results.

[mikadonovan]

Re: Old Ricohs and Chromebook

The IT guy said he made some changes within the IPV4 detailed settings of the 2 machines to get them working again, but I'm not sure which ones he enabled. No matter, problem is resolved.

[SalesServiceGuy]

Re: Old Ricohs and Chromebook

Free Papercut Mobility Print is designed for this purpose.

[t3hscrubz]

Re: Old Ricohs and Chromebook

Ricoh Smart Device connector will also be a workable solution in this case.