I keep meaning to resolve to post more of the endless linux/Mac OS X tweaking and general trouble fixing that is part of my life. Giving back to the community kindathing.

Usually I don't, because the thing takes days or weeks to fix and I'm not good at keeping the right kind of notes as I go along.

This one was quite simple though, and I couldn't find anything useful on either the HP or Apple sites.

I just bought an Airport Express and a HP Laserjet 1022. Setting up the Airport Express and getting it plugged into the existing wifi network was a dream. Then I plugged the USB printer into the Express, installed the driver software from the CD, and it automagically appeared in Printer Setup Utility List. Wow, I thought.

However the Setup utility couldn't find the exact right driver (the 1022 didn't appear in the list), and other HP drivers with similar model numbers were all postscript and produced garbage.

After much googling and fiddling, and a nice but unproductive technical support call with Sean at HP, I went back to basics, and tried the printer straight into the Mac. This worked fine.

So then I tried plugging the printer into the Airport again, and lo, it could now find the right driver ok.

The technological moral of the story, as usual: start simple, and work your way slowly up to complicated.

I hope this helps someone else, because to paraphrase Arlo Guthrie, "you may find yourself in a similar situation" (and I bet 50 people a day do)

#### Postscript (haha!)

and the instructions here got the box working from Ubuntu using the standard Printer prefs tool in 5 minutes. Hurrah!

#### UPDATE

The fix above worked fine on a Powerbook running Tiger, but I still can't get my G4 tower, also running Tiger, to see the printer over the wireless at all, only when it's plugged in via USB.

#### UPDATE 2

The fix above is wrong! I finally figured it out with the help of

this post on Apple's discussion boards

To make it detect the driver correctly,

  • from an application, hit APPLE+P to print

    • From the Printer dropdown, select 'Add Printer'

    • choose your Bonjour printer

    It should now detect the driver correctly, and you'll be fine forever more.

    Judging by the Apple forums this is happening with quite a few printers and Tiger and Airport Express