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Last week, the Brother laser printer hooked up to my computer suddenly stopped printing. No, the cable was plugged in, the printer and computer turned on; but nothing happened when I hit the "print" command. It was as though the computer no longer knew the printer was connected to it.

Experimentation (in the form of connecting the printer to other machines) quickly revealed that other computers could not detect my printer, either. One of these computers was at the second-hand computer store esrblog and I sometimes visit. The Computer Guy there said that, on similar models of printer, the element that heats the toner so that it will stick to the paper is located close to the printer's motherboard, and will occasionally fry the printer's motherboard.

Since we'd had a power surge/brownout lately, it seemed likely that that was what happened. So we bought another printer (the same model; there isn't enough difference in how laser printers are now made without spending a *lot* more, and we'd had fine service with the now-dead printer until now).

So we brought the new printer home, connected it and plugged it in.

And my computer still couldn't see it.

This printer, unlike the old dead one, can generate a self-test, so we know *its* motherboard is fine. esrblog now thinks my computer has a software problem, which he is not looking forward to trying to diagnose.

Stay tuned....