Adding WiFi to HP Laserjet Pro M15a with Raspberry Pi B+

 I have an old Raspberry Pi B+ since 2014. Did some experiments back then, even made it to broadcast a FM radio within 50m radius, but now I`m giving to it a new, particular tasks to do - make my simple and cheap HP LaserJet to be found in the local home network. 

So, I will need a few things. Firstly, a fresh SD Card with Legacy Raspbian OS, CLI. (While installing with Raspberry Pi imager, it is convenient to set all the necessary settings like enabling ssh and home wifi , so no monitor and external keyboards will be neccessary.) Then, install PuTTY. 

Finding the ip address of the pi can be done through home router (if DNA automatically assigns it), or ... attach it to separate monitor or keyboard.

Then, when you log in via ssh - first things - 

sudo apt update 

and 

sudo apt upgrade

When repos are set, next thing is installing CUPS (Common UNIX printing system). 

sudo apt-get install cups 

It is not enough tho. HP Laserjet Pro M15a will need hp drivers. This is where hplip can be helpful.

sudo apt-get install hplip

 

After HP drivers are installed, the CUPS needs to be configured so its admin page is available from any computer within my network.

So a CUPS configuration file needs a few modifications.

Editing /etc/cups/cupsd.conf:

 

# Listen on external interfaces for connections

Listen TheIPofMyRaspberryPI:631

Listen /var/run/cups/cups.sock

 

# Show shared printers on the local network.

Browsing On

BrowseOrder allow,deny

BrowseAllow all

BrowseAddress All

 

# Default authentication type, when authentication is required...

DefaultAuthType Basic

 

# Restrict access to the server...

<Location />

  Order allow,deny

  Allow localhost

  Allow All

</Location>

 

# Restrict access to the admin pages...

<Location /admin>

  Order allow,deny

  Allow All

</Location>

 

# Restrict access to configuration files...

<Location /admin/conf>

  AuthType Default

  Require user @SYSTEM

  Order allow,deny

  Allow All

</Location>

 

And now I can restart the service.

sudo service cups restart 

or 

sudo /etc/init.d/cups restart

 

Now lets add Raspberry Pi user to the lpadmin group

sudo usermod -a -G lpadmin your-username

 

Now the printer should be visible in the CUPS configuration page.

Opening the CUPS conf page on the browser - CUPS port is 631 

http://raspberrypiIPaddress:631

Navigate to add a printer. 

Now you should be able to see a printer in the list. 

 

In the end let`s make a Raspberry Pi having a static ip address. I have Mikrotik router. 

Under the section IP find DHCP server and select the Leases tab there. Find your RPi there, click on it, and click on the button "Make Static"

 

Then add printer on your local devices. It should show up.

 

Happy printing!

 

 

Restoring some old P1 computer

 Got a PC from a friend about year ago. Old, with Intel Pentium 100 processor on the MSI mobo MSI MS-5124 

So it had a problem with accessing a HDD. First thought - dead or going to die HDD. Tested and realized HDD working fine, but not correctly recognized. Swapped cables, tried different other HDDs, but when detecting the HDD, some gibberish on screen instead of HDD model. So, it sounds like a mobo or chipset fault. I even swapped the bios. 

Next thing I tried was some IDE controller cards. But those also without success.

And then I tried SCSI controller with SCSI disk. Well, it worked. SCSI disk size is 36.4 Gb. 

Now transferring the system from Win 98 floppy.

Some notes for me and for future.

To make the disk bootable the system must be transferred from floppy to C disk using the command sys C

The sys.com executable is compressed in the cabinet file ebd.cab and must be extracted. Depends of the Win 98 boot disk. I had to extract it. I extracted all files on formatted C disk and then copied sys.com back to A disk and then ran the sys C. Most likely this could be done directly by extracting sys file to A disk, instead of C disk.

Things I used fo avoid floppy nightmare - Gotek floppy emulator (multiple floppy images on usb flash) https://www.gotekemulator.com/

Things to do next - have to get all Win95 floppy disk images, upload it on my flash and install Win95

Because, why not?

Computer hardware abbreviation list

 Starting new job - teaching those young people something about how computers work. In hardware level. This semester will be tough - will have to understand and simultaneously organise the course. 

Moodle, of course, as a platform where to put all tasks, activities, tests, materials. Since university is still setting all of that up for me, had to save one of the activities somewhere. And - why not to share.

So here it is - computer hardware abbreviation list - task to give to studens so they find the definitions of abbreviations so often seen around.

And here the same task in latvian.