How To Setup Your Old Mac Mini As A Wireless Printer Server

Introduction

I love my old Mac Mini. It’s a little, amazing computer that I use daily for work. However, it does have one major flaw—it has no built-in wireless connectivity.

While there are USB wifi dongles and such, I didn’t want to clutter up the Mac Mini with extra hardware and cords. Instead, I just decided to connect it to my network via ethernet cable and then use some software magic to share my printer over wifi!

So—without further ado—here’s how you can do the same thing. Note: This guide is written using a 2010 Mac Mini running Snow Leopard (10.6). The screenshots will all be from this setup, so your screens might look different if you’re running newer software.

Introduction

A wireless printer server is a device that allows you to connect printers, scanners and other devices to your network without having to run cables between them. This can be useful if you have an office or home with many rooms or floors, but still need a central location that all of these devices can connect to.

This article will show you how to buy and set up an old Mac Mini as your wireless printer server!

How To Connect Your Mac Mini to Your Network

  • Turn on your Mac mini by pressing and holding the power button on the front panel until you hear it start to boot up.
  • Look for an Ethernet port on the back of your Mac Mini and connect a standard Ethernet cable between that port and one of the ports on your router or switch (the physical device connecting all computers in your home or office together).
  • Turn on your router, but don’t worry about making sure it’s connected to the internet just yet!
  • Verify that everything is plugged into where it should be by locating any lights or indicators around each device’s ports, switches and jacks: if everything looks good so far then proceed with turning things off again before continuing with Step 5 below; if not then double check that nothing has moved since connecting stuff together during Step 2 above before continuing with Step 5 below–and if still no luck go ahead and start over from scratch at Step 1 again–don’t worry though because once everything is correctly set up there will be no reason why these steps won’t work properly every single time going forward!

How To Setup Sharing

Once you have the printer connected to your network, it’s time to set up sharing. In the finder, right-click on the printer and click “Sharing” at the top of the menu that appears. Then click “Share this printer on the network”.

In another window that pops up, check “Share printers connected to this computer” and enter a name for your shared printer so others can easily find it when they search for one from their computers or phones.

How To Add The Printer

In the menu that pops up, choose “Add Printer” from the list of printers. You should see a list of all printers that are connected to your Mac Mini and on your home network. Choose the printer you want to add in this list (this is the one I had set up for wireless printing over my router).

If there are no printers listed in this menu or if you want to add a new one, click on “Add Printer” at the top right corner of your screen. After clicking on it, follow any prompts that appear (such as entering in an IP address) until you reach a screen where you can select which printer you want to add.

If there is an existing printer listed but it’s not what you want, click on it and choose “Select a different printer”.

Once done, anyone in your home can print wirelessly.

Once you’re done, anyone in your home can print from any device on your network. They can print from their laptops, desktops, smart TVs and tablets. If they have a printer connected to the Mac Mini then it will show up in their list of available printers. So if they want to print something on paper then all they have to do is click “print” in whatever application they are using.

If they don’t have a printer connected then they can use their mobile devices or smart phones instead of connecting to an actual physical inkjet or laser printer that is sitting somewhere else in the house (or office). The beauty of this setup is that once everything has been configured properly there really isn’t much more work involved: you simply turn on your old Mac Mini and everything should just work!

Conclusion

By the end of this tutorial, you’ll have your Mac Mini setup as a server on your network and ready to do the heavy lifting with any devices connected to it. And if you’re wondering how to set up sharing in Mac OS X Lion, read on!

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