Hello and HNY!
We own an HP LaserJet Professional M1212nf MFP, and after installing it on a new 2024 Mac mini, Apple reports it cannot find a suitable driver. Unfortunately, HP’s driver isn’t up to date (link to HP driver), and now we’re stuck.
Is there a compatible generic driver available? If so, where can we download it from?
Any help would be greatly appreciated! 
Cheers
I went through this about a year ago, to no avail. I ended up with a new printer.
Assuming that printer has a built-in HP LaserJet Network interface/card you can try installing using macOS built-in Unix/lpr printer drivers.
A month ago i decommissioned a 15-year old HP LasetJet 2100. It had a built-in HP Ethernet card but only supported HP PCL and not Postcript but it worked fine for many years:
HP LaserJet 2100
On Mac configure for direct printing in Mac Settings
Click “+” at the bottom left of the “Printers” list
Change selection from “Default” to “IP” globe icon
Input IP Address of printer: 192.168.1.100 (or whatever your IP address is as seen by your router)
Mac will dynamically poll printer and fill in some info below
Change “Protocol:” to “HP Jetdirect - Socket” if not selected already
Change the “Name:” from the IP address to a meaningful name “HP LaserJet 2100”
For the HP printer, make sure the “Use:” is set to “Generic PCL Printer”.
Click “Add”
If it auto-selects HP LaserJet 2100, it will not work (It will actually install the Postscript driver assuming the printer has the Postscript upgrade installed which will not work)
Did you try installing the driver? According to the HP website, the v5.1 driver supports MacOS 12:
If you haven’t tried it, I suggest that you do.
Does the Mac still support CUPS? That might allow printing but the other features, scanning, etc. would need an HP driver.
Yes. I use CUPS once in a while to clear printer queues or manually change the destination printer IP address configuration.
For anyone interested, here’s my cheat sheet instructions:
1 Open Terminal.app and run cupsctl WebInterface=yes. This enables the CUPS web interface
2 Open http://127.0.0.1:631/printers in your web browser
3 Click on the printer you want to change. From the “Administration” drop down, select “Modify Printer”.
4 Log in with your local admin account
5 Select the new printer IP either from “Discovered Network Printers” or add it manually with “Other Network Printers”. Make sure that you keep the same connection protocol as it says in “Current Connection” (for me, this was LPD).
Once you’re done with this, Mac OS X will directly print to the new IP address. There is no need to reboot or so. If you want to disable the CUPS web interface again, run cupsctl WebInterface=no
The configuration information is stored in a system file in /etc/cups/printers.conf. You could edit the file and just change the IP address, but you can easily run into permission problems and end up screaming with frustration
Coincidentally, my friend recently posted this to a dealer forum complaining about printer problems:
