May 18, 2024
 Electronics-Workbench
Installing a Brother MPC997CDW in Debian 12 "bookworm"
So here together we will get this old workhorse working on the network. This will be done via the RJ-45 Ethernet connector on the rear of the printer. So lets get started first head over to the Brother website to download all of the drivers. Create a folder in you Download folder and lets call it MFC-9970CDW. Now Grab EVERYTHING! First lets upgrade some packages that you may or may-not have. I did not as I use a DVD image (1) only.
For the next step lets grab the packages with synaptic package manager, for starters you will need curl, xsane, and sane-utils. Now lets install the printer.
root@Bedrock/Downloads/software/MFC-9970CDW# ls
brother-udev-rule-type1-1.0.2-0.all.deb
brscan4-0.4.11-1.amd64.deb
brscan-skey-0.3.2-0.amd64.deb
linux-brprinter-installer-2.2.3-1
linux-brprinter-installer-2.2.3-1.gz
mfc9970cdwcupswrapper-1.1.1-5a.i386.deb
mfc9970cdwcupswrapper-1.1.1-5.i386.deb
mfc9970cdwlpr-1.1.1-5a.i386.deb
mfc9970cdwlpr-1.1.1-5.i386.deb
uninstaller_brscan4
uninstaller_brscan-skey
uninstaller_MFC9970CDW
Now lets run the installer but you have to un-zip it. just double click on it and it should take care of it.
root@Bedrock/Downloads/software/MFC-9970CDW#LINUX-BRPRINTER-INSTALLER-2.2.2.3-1
Now just answer the questions.. when it asks for the connection type answer NETWORK.
At this point try your printer with a test print. It will fail. So now lets open the system settings you can find that in your menu. So lets ping the printer (this assumes that you know your printers address, if not you can set it via the touch screen menu system)
fred@/home/flintstone$ping 192.168.1.55
Now this just happens to be my printer's ip-address.
PING 192.168.1.55 (192.168.1.55) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.1.55: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=1.60 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.55: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=1.20 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.55: icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=1.14 ms
^C
--- 192.168.1.55 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2003ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 1.143/1.314/1.602/0.204 ms
fred@/home/flintstone$
If you cant ping your printer to have to edit the printer settings. use the Printer Settings from the main menu it should look like this (picture on the right:)
At this point we can now get the scanner working!
fred@/home/flintstone$ su root (enter the password)
root@fintstone#