How to connect an old Wi-Fi printer to a new router?

Question

I have an old Epson printer with Wi-Fi capability, it's a TX430W model. It always worked fine, but since I bought a new router a while ago, I'm not able to make the printer connect to Wi-Fi anymore. The router is a D-Link, model DIR-878, and I also have a D-Link repeater, model DAP-1530. My guess is that even though the printer can "see" the Wi-Fi network (both 2.45GHz and 5GHz), it can't connect because it supports only older encryption protocols:

• WEP (64/128 bit)
• WPA-PSK (TKIP/AES), compatible with WPA2.

My current network settings are using WPA2/WPA3 Personal. If that's the case, there is a way for me to connect this old printer to my Wi-Fi network? I've been using it on a USB cable but that can be a pain sometimes because the printer doesn't sit next to my desk.

Answer 1

1. Buy and older Wifi USB dongle and plug it into a computer. Then pair your printer to that.

2. Buy a raspberry Pi 4,sd card,power supply, and a network cable.

     1. Load the standard Pi 64 bit OS
     2. apt install hostpad
     3. vi /etc/hostpad.conf  OR vi /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
     4. Create change the SSID to whatever
     5. change the encryption setting to meet your need.
     6. service hostapd stop
     7. service hostpad start
     8. Set it to autostart hostpad 
     9. Your Pi 4 should dhcp its self an address
    10. You need to allocate a second IP on your network for the wlan adapater and a 3rd for the printer.  
    11. It will be easier to set a static IP for both outside of the dhcp range.  You might need to modify your routers settings to do this. 
    12. Set up ip_forward
   

The printer should again be visible on your network.