How I debug and get the apartment printer to work for me

September 04, 2024

So I'd like to print visa documents, but the Printwithme printer in the apartment:

  1. People told me it doesn't work
  2. I tried to follow the standard way - send an email with my pdf to the printer's email address - got a reply saying this printer is out of work
  3. However, I was thinking: though Printwithme built a business on this shared printer, it is still, a printer. When it was described as "out of order", most probably it's not connected to Printwithme's network.
  4. Ok, let's assume so, so I tried to connect the printer to my phone's hotspot: it works. It can open some help page which means it's connecting to the internet. However, print over an email or app still doesn't work. Printwithme still doesn't think this printer is online.
  5. So it could be some authentication issue which I cannot easily fix without hacking the printer. But, why do I have to use the wireless print? Could it also support some old way like a usb drive?
  6. I went through each option of the printer, and there it is. Print from drive.
  7. I tried with a trivial pdf file and it works!
  8. I tried to print all my visa documents, but they just got a blank page with one line: NOT SUPPORTED DATA: 1000
  9. I searched online and it seems a Brother Printer error code, which anyway means the PDF contains data that the printer cannot understand, maybe some forms in it or whatever.
  10. I converted the PDF to JPEGs, and combine these JPEGs and convert them back to PDFs. By doing this I hope all those fancy forms, links, metadatas are removed.
  11. I tried with the new PDFs again. They work!