The town where I live has a "Transfer Station" where you have to drop off your trash. It also has a Swap Shed where people put items that might have other uses. Old laser & inkjet printers are pretty common there, though the the inkjet ones are typically not worth fixing. This weekend I did find a HP JetDirect 600 card (stuck in an old HP laser printer) which I hoped would bring network connectivity to my big DesignJet 500.
I inserted the card into the 500, and it was recognized. However, when I tried to configure the card from the 500 front panel, it locked the printer up. I tried to reset the JetDirect card, but that didn't help. Not clear where the problem is, but I'm still on the lookout for another JetDirect card!
As a side note, I tried to find the firmware upgrades for the DesignJet 500, and HP's website is a total shambles. You can find pages that explain how to do the upgrade, and they point you somewhere else to get the download. However, those links don't actually work as another part of the website as been restructured.
Last night, I received the print heads that I had ordered. I put them in, and the printer went through the printhead alignment process -- printing much better than before. It took four cycles before the printer was happy. Color calibration was quick. The printheads that I bought were refurbished -- three of the four had already gone past their rated lifetime. Anyway, they were cheap.
Finally, I tried to print some pages, and I have to say that the quality is not very good -- it is unclear whether this is the fault of the rasterizer that is on OSX, or something else. I had to connect my MacBook to the printer with a USB cable, and then download a lot of HP software to make it work.
Anyway, now I just have to connect it to the network and try and convince the kids not to print posters!
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