Originally published at: Go Back to Basics When Troubleshooting Aging Hardware - TidBITS
I have a 2017 Brother HL-L8360CDW laser printer that I hadn’t used in years but wanted to re-enable for a new Mac Studio. After I connected it to my Wi-Fi network, AirPrint made it available for my Mac Studio, and I was able to print to it. Case closed.
But like so many of us, I couldn’t leave well enough alone. The printer was displaying a message on its LCD screen indicating that it had found a new firmware update. Who doesn’t like a good firmware update? Particularly one that may fix bugs and security issues, which is an essential part of responsibly managing devices exposed to the Internet.
Such good intentions of responsible ownership triggered the onset of trouble. Attempting to install the firmware update via the onscreen menu of the printer’s control panel did nothing—I ended up back at the Found New Firmware message. I wasn’t entirely surprised, since the printer was almost a decade old, and it’s easy to imagine a hardcoded update system failing over that period. It’s even conceivable that a previous firmware update that I’d missed would have fixed the problem. The printer’s engineers may not have anticipated it being left inactive for so long.
Unfortunately, attempting to install the firmware update from the printer’s control panel caused the printer to go offline, so the Mac could no longer see it. Nor could I get it to print a test page.
Perturbed that I had seemingly broken a functional printer by trying to update the firmware, I decided my best bet was to see if I could install the firmware update another way. I visited the printer’s support page, which revealed that the latest firmware update was from October 2025, and there were 28 previous updates, most of which promised “Improvement to help with the performance of the machine.” (In retrospect, I wonder if the seeming loop when updating the firmware from the printer’s control panel was a result of it downloading each subsequent update in turn, rather than jumping straight to the latest version.)
First, I tried using the Brother Firmware Update Tool over Wi-Fi, but since the Mac couldn’t see the printer at all, I wasn’t surprised when it failed. I was a bit more annoyed when an old Ethernet cable failed.
A quick trip to Glenn Fleishman’s Take Control of Untangling Connections reminded me that when the Brother HL-L8360CDW was released in 2017, USB 2.0 was the lowest common denominator communication method for laser printers—even USB 2.0’s 480 Mbps throughput was more than enough for print jobs.
Indeed, once I connected a standard USB Type-A to USB-B cable, the Brother Firmware Update Tool could suddenly see my printer. A click of a button and a few minutes of updating later, and the printer was running the latest firmware. Even better, it appeared on Wi-Fi again, and I was able to print. Problem solved!
I share this not because flashing the firmware of an ancient Brother laser printer is something that many people will want to do, but because TidBITS readers are often asked for help in reactivating older hardware. Schools, non-profits, and charities working with razor-thin budgets frequently receive and want to repurpose donated legacy devices.
The moral of the story is that when you’re trying to work with older hardware, your best bet is often the simplest connection type available when the device was new. Prefer cables over wireless, and don’t be dismissive of protocols like USB 2.0 that are now laughably slow but may have been state-of-the-art at the time.
Suman Chakrabarti is retired from decades of senior engineering and IT workgroup administration. He remembers working on Solaris, SunOS, DEC Ultrix, VMS, and Linux workstations back in the day. He also believes in Apple user groups and has been a demonstrator, discussion leader, facilitator, and troubleshooter for multiple groups throughout that time.