blogONEI’ve never done this before, and my hypothesis was pretty much correct from the get-go, but of course…all things techie doesn’t really go smoothly at first. This short how-to is for the ASUS WL-520GU (or all G-series?) router, tried and true on a rig running Windows XP SP3, and with an HP PSC1200. Keep on reading for the steps I took.
The first thing you want to do is install the printer on each computer you wish to use it with. In Windows, this is pretty simple, since all you need to do is plug in the printer (make sure its on!) and click some happy prompts.
After installing the printer’s drivers on each computer (I’m pretty sure you can do a network installation if you’ve one set-up), plug your printer into the WL520. ASUS states that most major printers are compatible with the internal print server, and specifically state Canon, HP and Brother. Once you’ve got the printer plugged in and powered up, you should be able to see that the printer is “Online” in the Router Admin screen.
Head back to your ‘Doze rig and open up your Printers and Faxes,right-click on the hp psc 1200 series printer and hit Properties. Now, go to the Ports tab and click Add New Port. You’ll want to make it a Standard TCP/IP port, with the Printer Name/IP Address as your router’s IP (default 192.168.1.1). When you click Next, if you get a prompt asking for “Additional Port Information”, most likely your printer, like mine, does not have a network card inside it. To get past this possible roadblock, choose Custom then click Settings, and use the following settings. For Protocol, I used RAW with the default listed port of 9100; I’ve also tried LPR, but only the test page printed for me. Click OK, Apply and Close – you should be back at the Printers and Faxes screen. Finally, right-click hp psc 1200 series again, but this time click User Printer Online – the printer status should now say “Online”.
You can see if you’re successful by right-clicking the printer and going to Properties and clicking Print Test Page while in the General tab. It took less than 30 seconds for the job to be sent to my printer, while we get a prompt telling us it could take between 1 to 2 minutes. You might also want to try making a text file in Notepad and printing it to further verify everything works.
Congratulations, you now have a working printer server! 
Update:
Based on some of the comments posted below, there is a need to discuss the possibility of this solution working with Linux and/or Apple computers. Firstly, as suggested by my friend Tim Ng, Apple computers uses a printing system known as CUPS, which should theoretically be similar to what Linux uses. With that being said, you could hypothetically install the Linux-based hplip drivers, as one cannot find the HP PSC 1210 in the list of CUPS drivers. Now, with THAT being said, I haven’t used variations of Linux (ie. Ubuntu) in ages…so you’re going to be on your own for the installation of hplip and/or CUPS. I’d strongly suggest following the instructions available at hplip and asking for additional support regarding it at its respective source.
Good luck! 
addone Reply:
August 17th, 2009 at 9:11 am
Unfortunately I don’t readily have access to a Mac, poy. If I can get someone over with their MB though, I’ll see what can be done.
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