OK. I know what you are thinking - this is a .Net Crazy blog - not a Mac/Apple blog. I admit that you are right, but (AND THIS IS A BIG BUT) I have just spent more time than I care to admit (OK - about an hour really) trying to get my handy dandy Brother HL-2140 to print after hooking it up to my iMac. Yes I know.....I'm a PC girl, but I do have many computers running various things and I do have a Mac in the family. Everyone is welcome where I come from!
Anyway, I have been using this printer with my PCs without a problem. I hooked it up to my iMac, download the latest drivers for it from the Brother website and tried to print. Nothing! What? Isn't hooking a printer up to the mac supposed to be super easy (hahaha)? Nope! I uninstalled and reinstalled (the PC thing to do) and still nothing. I kept getting a client-error-not-possible error! What in the world is that? Talk about obscure errors! Ghhheeshhhhh! I researched the issue. Many people have had the same issue, but there was no resolution displayed. OK. Lets start playing around.
I decided to try to see if it was the printer driver causing the problem or the printer. I selected a variety of different types of print drivers to see if I could get the printer to have a reaction. I used various CUPS drivers for different Brother printers since that is what the actual driver for the HL-2140 is. I came up short! Then I used a Gutenprint driver for one of the other Brother printers. Guess what? I got a reaction! The printer "pretended" to print - it spit out paper, but didn't print the text. OOOOKKKKK.....now what?
Since I did get a reaction when I used a Gutenprint driver, I realized that the issue was driver related (see how smart I am?). I decided to try a different approach. I went back to the Brother website and I downloaded an OLD driver for the HL-2140. I have an iMac with OS 10.5.8 (as of today) and I downloaded the HL-2140 driver for OS 10.4. I went through the process of installing - blah,blah,blah - followed directions - blah,blah,blah and tried to print. Guess what? It worked!!!! Success, success, success! I AM as smart as I think I am (I hope :-)).
Anyway, that solved the problem and I could print on my Brother HL-2140 using my iMac running OS 10.5.8. Hopefully this saves you time and allows you to just get on with things.
If this helps you, write a comment and tell me how wonderful I am. If it DOESN'T help you, write a comment and tell me know how wonderful I am.
Smooches,
Kila
Problem: Brother HL 2140 printer will not print when connected to an iMac running OS 10.5.8
Solution: Download the old drivers for OS 10.4 from the Brother website and install it per the instructions. After the install and reboot, the printer should now print using the old drivers.
