At the end of last year I moved over to an Apple laptop from Windows.
Today I tried to connect a perfectly functional Samsung ML-1520. It’s a no go with Apple drivers, can’t find any anywhere. Lots of Windows drivers available all over the place.
Imagine my frustration, a perfectly useable printer with a new toner and I can’t use it.
Does anyone have a solution other than bin it and get a new one.
Useless feedback alert.
Printer drivers…don’t get me started.
Do you have bootcamp on your Mac?
If you do, you may be able to drive your Samsung , but if I am wrong , I will quickly be corrected, apparently it is an issue, I managed to find this -but this is part and it looks very complicated
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Have you contacted Samsung about this?
How old is your Mac? My MacBook Pro is from 2011 and I can no longer update to the latest OS, this has caused some driver issues.
I was going to suggest looking for a CUPS driver.
Does it have a USB connection?
https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/openprinting/database/cupsdocumentation
https://www.openprinting.org/printer/Samsung/Samsung-ML-1520
Some of these steps are a bit involved. I note the Splix distribution is not hosted at source so beware potential of embedded malware.
Sorry this is just from a brief internet serach.
Ok, which macOS version are you running?
This suggests official drivers are available up to Catalina, but possibly not (or not yet) for BigSur.
If you’re on BigSur and Mac came with Catalina or earlier you could potentially revert or boot from an external drive to do what you need as a worst case sceanario, but newer macOS versions may have some System Preferences to change to allow external boot.
Another option which is a faff, but you could use a Virtual Machine to install Windows or potentially a compatible macOS version.
High Sierra on an old mac mini.
Tried your link and got an error that it wont allow me to install as its from an unidentified developer.
Splix seems dead. Unable to find files. Most links are dead.
That should be easily fixable.
NOTE - I’m slow tonight that driver link I gave earlier may not be an official Samsung one - hence the protection!
Just be careful about the source of the download, if it’s Samsung it should be fine. Apple are basically increasingly locking down the ability to install software from potentially dubious sources which might contain malware, but still give the user options to override currently.
I’m on High Sierra on Mac Mini too. I’ll see if I can open the driver and install it.
It gets even more convoluted when you go to Samsung’s support site:
Samsung.com searches link to HP:
…plus the 1520 on the HP site is an inkjet printer. What a mess!
Appreciate you may not want a new printer, but I got an Epson Ecotank printer a few years ago - I’m yet to refill any of the inkjet compartments despite many thousands of pages of printing for school/home schooling. Modern version of unofficial 3rd party continuous inking systems for consumer level products of yesteryear and I’ve been home printing since the first national lottery draw in colour, longer in B&W.
Won’t necessarily have speed or clarity of laser but most have 2 sided printing. For the 2750 model I have a complete set of replcement inks was under £45, and as noted there’s plenty left from topping up the ink reservoirs 2 years ago with the original ink that came with the printer! Not proper photo printer quality either, but theer are more refined models.
The trouble with inkjets is head blockage. I only use the printer occasionally as you can guess from my first post, thats why I want to opt for a cheapish laser.
Thanks for the suggestions but so far ai havent had any luck.so it looks like a new printer.
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Where did you get the printer driver?
What printer driver?
My mistake, can see the one you couldn’t install was from a link I gave.
I do agree, these are fantastic printers, the latest ones are really good quality, can print photo quality, double sided and quick… and best of all hugely economical, with bottles of ink as opposed to cartridges or toner… and good anti blocking technology, as long as left powered.
I replaced by Samsung laser with one of these.
As far as Mac computers go, I find things like drivers very frustrating… MS has mastered this area now, Apple has some way to go.
With the EPSON my iMac and iOS devices connect fine using the Apple interface… and my MS PCs and Android devices connect just fine as well. No effort to required to install driver on any device, and the MS PC self downloaded and configured its driver… impressive.
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Surely you could run some sort of Linux distribution with support for the printer in a virtual machine on the Mac?
Or load up VMWare Fusion and import your old PC as a VM running your printer under windows.
I can honestly say, Ive never experienced issues with any sort of drivers on my various Macs, whereas the MS operating system remains a complete crock. It does however depend to what degree your 3rd party device is committed to writing software to support other OS’s and Samsung is less than satisfactory in this area.
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I’ve had far too many printers over the years.
My old Epson printers used to frequently clog, an issue I rarely had with Canon printers, many of which had user replaceable printheads, but the non-pigment Canon prints often faded badly.
Before I got the ecotank I looked over the technology pages at Epson, and their Ecotank printheads were designed with less clogging in mind, though if left unused for weeks I do have to run the odd nozzle cleaning cycle but with the cheap ink this is less frustrating than with cartridges where cleaning wasted money.
The Ecotank printer I had is not really photo quality, I think there may be better newer ones.
I mainly got the Ecotank as I thought the kids might need to print lots of documents for schoolwork, and it’s great that I can tell them to print whatever they want whenever they want without worrying about ink costs. Mrs AC is doing a college course and she’s printing dozens of articles/papers each week on the Epson. A laser printer would produce crisper text and be faster naturally but I don’t think she can read faster than the Epson prints!
As noted, after several thousand pages I have maybe 30% of original ink left, but just got a complete set of inks for just over £40 which should last another couple of years.