Live data from Hacker News

Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP

printervention.app

101–102 of 102 posts

Re: Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP

#101

I do have an ancient Dr. Stika cutter plotter which works on an old WinXP with parallel port. I did try a few times to get it to work in a VM with an USB-Parallel adapter but haven't been successful so far. "Fixed" it by replacing it with a new CriCut. But unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any open driver or software for CriCut - so I'm afraid I'll run into the same problem in a few years again :-/

As a Silhouette owner (for the plotter), same - I genuinely wonder whether the Chinese market have models... the type of Chinese-market product that seems to live on because it gets rebadged.

Re: Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP

#102
post #8

Thank you, loved this and it made me "duh!". I have an old-ish Samsung laser printer that works perfectly and a Linux file server at home and the printer no longer supports AirPrint. I never thought about using the Linux box as an AirPrint server! This will free me from all the odd print requests from my kids! (probably)

It’ll work great if you can get the drivers all aligned properly. I’ve tried a few times to get my 12 year old Brother laser setup like that, and each time I end up throwing in the towel. Maybe I’ll try it again someday with an LLM assisting.

CUPS just worked, it even supports AirPrint natively now. Thankfully my printer supports IPP (it's an all in one office type), so I didn't have to do much other than install a couple packages, add the printer and configure the default paper size.
Post reply on HN