cooltouch
Getting Fingers Dirty
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2014
- Messages
- 19
- Reaction score
- 7
- Points
- 23
- Location
- Houston, Texas
- Printer Model
- Brother All In One
I own an HP laser printer. I bought it new probably 14 or 15 years ago. Across the front it reads "hp LaserJet 1200 Series" so as far as I know, that's also the model number.
It stopped working one day -- that was it. Just one day it stopped printing. It has a button on the top left of the front and a couple of small lights next to the button, one green and one amber. If I press the button for a really long time and let go, both the green and amber lights will blink for a second or so and then they stop. That's it. But if I press in the button for about five seconds and let go, the green light will blink -- same as it does during a print project -- and it will print out a Self Test / Configuration page. And the page that gets printed out looks perfect. So I find it puzzling why it still does a great job of printing, but won't print.
I should back up a bit and start at the beginning of this problem in case it might affect your responses -- if any.
During this printer's early years I had it hooked up to a single printer via a parallel cable. That was back in Win98 days when parallel ports could still be found on motherboards. A few years later, when I bought a color inkjet for the XP 'puters on our small family network, I decided to put both printers on the network, so I bought a Hawking brand print server that had one parallel port and two USB ports. Paid about $80 for it. The HP worked happily running from the Hawking, but unfortunately I found out that the inkjet was not one of the ones that were compatible with the Hawking, so that was a bit of a let-down, but oh well. Then the day came when the printer just stopped working. And of course I didn't know whether to blame the printer or the Hawking.
Well, by this time, my computer had been upgraded a couple of times and there was no longer a parallel port on the motherboard. Well, no problem, thought I, since the 1200 series also had a USB port. So I replaced the parallel cable with a USB 2.0 cable and hooked the printer up to my computer. The computer did the whole ba-ding! thing when I plugged it in, and began to install a set of Microsoft drivers for it. Still nothing. The print job just sat in the input queue forever -- or until I manually deleted it. Well, not entirely trusting the MS drivers, I went to HP's site and d/l'd their latest, and installed theirs. No difference.
And that's where things have been ever since. It's been a bit over a year now since the problem appeared. I've been using ink jets instead and it sits on the shelf, forgotten, but there are times -- like now -- that I decide to take another crack at it and see if I could get to the bottom of the problem. I would really like to get that laser back into service. For one thing, I had just bought a new toner cartridge maybe a couple weeks or so before it quit. And toner cartridges for the 1200 Series are not cheap!
Oh, one other bit of news. I was meaning to check the Hawking out to see what its status was, and I finally got around to that today. Well, near as I can determine, it's busted. I d/l'd Hawking's latest software and installed it, and it can't find the server. I got inside the router and looked around and there is one item on the network that is listed as "unknown" and "inactive." If I try to get inside it using its IP address (assigned to it by the router), my browser just clocks and then times out. Everything else on the network is accounted for. The only "unknown" item on the network is that Hawking. So I've determined to my satisfaction that it is a dead lump of plastic and ICs. Suitable for target practice.
But of course, now that I've determined that the Hawking is NG, then I'm taking a harder look at the HP, reminding myself about the pristine self-test pages it produces. What's the chance that its USB port is NG? I ask myself, not having any way to test the parallel port.
I see a few ways to get at the truth here. 1) I could take the cheap way out and unearth an old mobo with a parallel port from the layers of cast-off detritus in my storage and then cobble together a CPU, complete with an old OS, like Win98 or -- gasp! -- DOS! Plug the laser into the parallel port and see what happens. Or 2) I could go the expensive route, and buy a new print server, prices for which range from about $50 to $500. NOT. Or 3) I could take a trip out to MicroCenter and, with crossed fingers, hope they will have some cheapo PCI parallel port expansion cards. Not too long ago, I bought a PCI firewire card from them for about $12 or so, so I remain hopeful. And then there's the totally free option: 4) ask folks here if they might know why my hp laserjet 1200 series is just letting print jobs sit in the input queue and ignoring them.
Sorry for all the long-windedness, but now you really do know the entire story.
It stopped working one day -- that was it. Just one day it stopped printing. It has a button on the top left of the front and a couple of small lights next to the button, one green and one amber. If I press the button for a really long time and let go, both the green and amber lights will blink for a second or so and then they stop. That's it. But if I press in the button for about five seconds and let go, the green light will blink -- same as it does during a print project -- and it will print out a Self Test / Configuration page. And the page that gets printed out looks perfect. So I find it puzzling why it still does a great job of printing, but won't print.
I should back up a bit and start at the beginning of this problem in case it might affect your responses -- if any.
During this printer's early years I had it hooked up to a single printer via a parallel cable. That was back in Win98 days when parallel ports could still be found on motherboards. A few years later, when I bought a color inkjet for the XP 'puters on our small family network, I decided to put both printers on the network, so I bought a Hawking brand print server that had one parallel port and two USB ports. Paid about $80 for it. The HP worked happily running from the Hawking, but unfortunately I found out that the inkjet was not one of the ones that were compatible with the Hawking, so that was a bit of a let-down, but oh well. Then the day came when the printer just stopped working. And of course I didn't know whether to blame the printer or the Hawking.
Well, by this time, my computer had been upgraded a couple of times and there was no longer a parallel port on the motherboard. Well, no problem, thought I, since the 1200 series also had a USB port. So I replaced the parallel cable with a USB 2.0 cable and hooked the printer up to my computer. The computer did the whole ba-ding! thing when I plugged it in, and began to install a set of Microsoft drivers for it. Still nothing. The print job just sat in the input queue forever -- or until I manually deleted it. Well, not entirely trusting the MS drivers, I went to HP's site and d/l'd their latest, and installed theirs. No difference.
And that's where things have been ever since. It's been a bit over a year now since the problem appeared. I've been using ink jets instead and it sits on the shelf, forgotten, but there are times -- like now -- that I decide to take another crack at it and see if I could get to the bottom of the problem. I would really like to get that laser back into service. For one thing, I had just bought a new toner cartridge maybe a couple weeks or so before it quit. And toner cartridges for the 1200 Series are not cheap!
Oh, one other bit of news. I was meaning to check the Hawking out to see what its status was, and I finally got around to that today. Well, near as I can determine, it's busted. I d/l'd Hawking's latest software and installed it, and it can't find the server. I got inside the router and looked around and there is one item on the network that is listed as "unknown" and "inactive." If I try to get inside it using its IP address (assigned to it by the router), my browser just clocks and then times out. Everything else on the network is accounted for. The only "unknown" item on the network is that Hawking. So I've determined to my satisfaction that it is a dead lump of plastic and ICs. Suitable for target practice.
But of course, now that I've determined that the Hawking is NG, then I'm taking a harder look at the HP, reminding myself about the pristine self-test pages it produces. What's the chance that its USB port is NG? I ask myself, not having any way to test the parallel port.
I see a few ways to get at the truth here. 1) I could take the cheap way out and unearth an old mobo with a parallel port from the layers of cast-off detritus in my storage and then cobble together a CPU, complete with an old OS, like Win98 or -- gasp! -- DOS! Plug the laser into the parallel port and see what happens. Or 2) I could go the expensive route, and buy a new print server, prices for which range from about $50 to $500. NOT. Or 3) I could take a trip out to MicroCenter and, with crossed fingers, hope they will have some cheapo PCI parallel port expansion cards. Not too long ago, I bought a PCI firewire card from them for about $12 or so, so I remain hopeful. And then there's the totally free option: 4) ask folks here if they might know why my hp laserjet 1200 series is just letting print jobs sit in the input queue and ignoring them.
Sorry for all the long-windedness, but now you really do know the entire story.
