[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

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



On 08/05/2017 12:44 PM, Curt wrote:
On 2017-08-05, Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> wrote:
On Fri 04 Aug 2017 at 20:19:33 -0400, Jape Person wrote:

On 08/04/2017 06:39 PM, Brian wrote:

It's sad, isn't it? There must be enough Linux / Unix folks using brother
printers to make it worth Brother's trouble to provide a utility for this. I
guess most environments have either Windows or Mac available, but mine
didn't until I got the little NUC. $300 so I can do firmware upgrades.

Making lemonade, I'll probably try to play some old games on the little box.
There's always a silver lining.

I wonder whether wine would help (with installing the firmware, I mean).

I was wondering whether a native utility like flashrom could be used for
this. However when I looked at the Brother firmware executable to see
whether the firmware part could be extracted, I found that in fact the
exe file doesn't contain the firmware at all, but rather downloads the
latter from a Brother internet server somewhere in the cloud and then
installs into the printer.


I should have mentioned that. I was aware that the firmware updater connected to a server in order to grab and install the new firmware.

It's all a little patchier than I'd like. The unreliable installation instructions, the fact that a recommended firmware upgrade I got from Brother and installed is no longer even listed in the update history on their site, and the odd documented bug in the firmware that evidently provides bad information to CUPS is enough to make me want to avoid another firmware update altogether. If I do decide to update the firmware again, I'm going to be leery of workarounds. I'll just do it via Windows.

Frankly I would be leery of going through the procedure without a lot of
wine for fear of bricking my device.


A lot of wine is almost always good.

;-)


Reply to: