brother mfc4550plus

[Guest]

Hey all:
I've had so much luck, solving problems on these discussion boards
today, I thought I would give you all a real challenge.
I have a brother 4550plus, printer, fax, scanner,copier, &pc fax machine.
Its connected to my computer via a paralell port cable. I can get this
machine to do everything exept scan. Brother has no add in drivers for this,
and they say they are imbedded into the machine, abd xp should have no
problem setting this up. I can't seem to use this function still. the machine
is recognized and running on printer port LPT1. Any help opn this one would
be greatly appreciated, as I have a document I would like to scan and send to
my pc

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

In the Control Panel, under Admin Tools, Services, is the WIA Service set to
Automatic and started?

 

[Guest]

Hey Cari;
Thankx for the prompt reply. WIA servive is on Automatic.
Thankx in advance...Jim

 

[Mark Jerde]

Jim -- I was having problems with a Brother printer/scanner (DCP-7020) on
the parallel port. I gave up, deinstalled it, and reinstalled it using a
USB port. No problems in the couple weeks since doing this.

-- Mark

 

[Guest]

Thankx Mark;
Unfortunatly this unit must me a little older, as it has no usb hookup,
but maybe I can find a usp converter cable> I'v pretty much given up on this
one, but would have been nice to have that scanner option.

 

[Mark Jerde]

Jim -- You may not find this helpful but let me explain my viewpoint. ;-)

I suggest you buy a new scanner and/or scanner printer. IMO the cost is
very low. If it helps your conscience find a charity who needs a printer
and give it to them... ;-)

My viewpoint: I started on my career in software development in 1976 as a
high school senior. In my personal museum I have paper tape and punch cards
as mementos of the era. I spent $214.48 on my first calculator, a HP-25C.
(I have no idea why I recall the cost exactly nearly 30 years later but I do
recall it.) In 1983 I bought my first PC. It was an Eagle 1610 with a 10
MB hard disk. It cost me over $4k in 1983 dollars. The question people
asked me was, "Ten Megabytes? My god, what will you do with all that
space?" I worked for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)
in the early 1990's and when we needed to make CD-ROMs a person had to go to
a factory in (IIRC) Virginia to have the CDs made.

Over 11 years ago I bought a good personal printer, a HP-IIIP, for almost
$1,000.00. I printed thousands of pages on it. It worked fine the whole
time I had it and for the past 3 or 4 years it was connected to my wife's
PC. She had a 1200x600 DPI USB scanner for her scanning needs. But she
often sent print jobs over our home network to "my" Brother MFC-6800 because
the 600DPI printing was so much better. This annoyed me as the Brother
would come to life and start printing, DESTROYING my programming
concentration. So when "her" HP-3P finally ran out of toner I got her the
Brother DCP-7020. She uses it to print and scan and we're both happy. She
gets the 600DPI resolution for scanning and printing, and "my" printer stays
blissfully quiet unless I it to print. ;-)

Surprisingly it didn't cost much more to get a new Brother DCP-7020 than to
get another toner cartridge for the HP-3P.

My experience is that when older equipment doesn't work right, it's usually
cheaper and easier to get modern equipment. I hate that perfectly good, if
obsolete, equipment I've owned is now in landfill, but that's the reality of
the computer industry.

-- Mark