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Re: pesky and persistent "driverless" Brother MFC-9340CDW

On 08/04/2017 08:25 AM, Curt wrote:

On 2017-08-04, Jape Person <japers@comcast.net> wrote:

A few weeks ago a CUPS upgrade to our Debian testing systems
started showing a new driver for our Brother MFC-9340CDW in print
dialogs and in the CUPS printer list and in the
system-config-printer utility.

You'd think that was good news, but we've been unable to find any
way to make the queue for this "driverless" instance of the printer
function properly.



Just very quickly found this bug that seems to be relevant to your
case, Jape. As you didn't describe the "garbled" condition of your
printouts with the "driverless" driver I can't be sure but it seems a
fair guess.
Apparently a resolution dpi error (reported as 600x2dpi--firmware bug?--and set that way by cups in the PPD. Workaroundable by 
modifying the PPD manually as explained in the thread).
BTW at the Brother site I think they're recommending updating the firmware for this printer (maybe not for the reasons explicited 
here).

HTH.


https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=868360





Thanks, Curt.
It's funny (in much the same way that hitting your thumb with a hammer is funny) that the Brother support site does indeed list a later firmware update than the one I installed when I first got the printer. If one looks at the driver update history at the site, the version number jumps from 1.07 to 1.09. I have 1.08.
I purchased a Windows 10 system, trundled the printer from the den to the living room to connect to the Windows 10 system via USB cable, and updated to a firmware version that is no longer even listed on the support site.
And the notes on the 1.09 firmware version update are that it "fixes some software bugs". As you implied, they're not exactly explicit about the reasons one might have for installing their latest firmware.
I'm going to write them to see if they will provide any worthwhile information. If they don't, I'll stick with what I've got and use the MFC-9320CW driver -- at least until such time as I have a day when I'm only twiddling my thumbs and looking for something to do.
I really appreciate the information you've provided. It really helps put the problem in perspective. I think both sides in the thread made good points. It's wonderful to have the printer detected and installed automatically, but not so wonderful if it doesn't work. The approach used by CUPS should have worked. A useful fallback would have been nice. But the ball is definitely in Brother's court. 

Best regards,
JP
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