Thank you computing Ppruners

[Capn Notarious]

I have a local area network with cat five cable. Wall mounted ethernet sockets about the home.
A lap top is plugged in, but printing is done elsewhere in the home, using a printer connected to another computor.
The plan is to add another printer/scanner/copier, an Epson DX3800. I should like to employ an unused ethernet socket, to connect up new Epson; which has usb.
What is the method?
Keeping big hardware out of sight is the aesthetic objective.
Making the scanner avaliable, to the command of other computors is essential.

[Mac the Knife]

Hi Cap'n

Googling around it seems that the DX3800 does not have built-in networking. It 's designed to plug into a computer rather than be an autonomous network printer.

Don't despair - you'll have to buy a little box called a network print server that supports USB printers. And you'll need a router if you don't already have one.

Plug the printer into the print server and connect the print server to the network - thereafter follow the instructions as to how to get the PCs to recognise and use the printer over the network.

NETGEAR stuff is good and the PS121 USB mini print server sounds like what you need - http://www.netgear.co.uk/usb_print_server_ps121.php?type= - The Epson CX3800 is listed on it's compatibility list and the DX3800 (if it isn't a mistype) will probably be OK.

You CAN do it yourself, but getting some savvy chum around to help will make it a lot quicker.

NB: Scanning is not supported - I don't know if you will find a print server that supports scanning because that depends on functions that only a PC usually has.