I bought a 25-year-old printer & regret EVERYTHING
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Date: 2024-04-19
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Comments and reviews: 20
Quake120
In my life of being a computer geek and in my IT career of 22 or so years, I've worked with all of your basic computer peripherals, plus I've worked for a game studio where I worked with game development consoles of various kinds, and I've worked in data centers for 12 years now on hundreds of different kinds of hardware ranging from fiber optic interface converters all the way up to mainframes and everything in between, and I worked for a law firm where I was the IT director and had to deal with several high volume, high speed, color laser workgroup printers.
After all of that experience, I can say that printers are the WORST peripherals in the IT field. I've spent more time working on getting printers working than anything else.
$80, 000 piece of enterprise server hardware Easy to get working. most of the time. $120 printer An exercise in frustration.
Inkjets are by far the worst types of printers. There's a good reason why there are literal STACKS of them at thrift stores. They are garbage.
Spend the extra cash and buy a laser printer because they are more reliable, the toner lasts longer, they are faster, higher quality, and overall just a better experience. They are still printers so you'll still run into paper jams, driver issues, etc, but at least you don't get a clogged nozzle that makes the printer a paperweight.
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In my life of being a computer geek and in my IT career of 22 or so years, I've worked with all of your basic computer peripherals, plus I've worked for a game studio where I worked with game development consoles of various kinds, and I've worked in data centers for 12 years now on hundreds of different kinds of hardware ranging from fiber optic interface converters all the way up to mainframes and everything in between, and I worked for a law firm where I was the IT director and had to deal with several high volume, high speed, color laser workgroup printers.
After all of that experience, I can say that printers are the WORST peripherals in the IT field. I've spent more time working on getting printers working than anything else.
$80, 000 piece of enterprise server hardware Easy to get working. most of the time. $120 printer An exercise in frustration.
Inkjets are by far the worst types of printers. There's a good reason why there are literal STACKS of them at thrift stores. They are garbage.
Spend the extra cash and buy a laser printer because they are more reliable, the toner lasts longer, they are faster, higher quality, and overall just a better experience. They are still printers so you'll still run into paper jams, driver issues, etc, but at least you don't get a clogged nozzle that makes the printer a paperweight.
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Meower68
My first printer was a Canon BJ-200. It was a first-generation version of this. Mine was black and white and looked nearly identical to this.
Speed, text and image qualities were all very good. It was reasonably compact and very quiet (compared to dot-matrix printers, while being much cheaper than the a laser.
Unfortunately, the ink was water-soluble. If you printed the address on an envelope (it was easy to do) and it was raining when you took the mail out to the mailbox, the rain would obliterate what you printed on it.
If your print head was all gummed up, you'd get white lines where there should be ink. Get some alcohol-based wipes and wipe the head until no more ink came off. After that, the printing worked beautifully.
After a couple years of using the heck out of that machine, I bought an Epson Stylus color ink jet and never looked back. Epson used dye-based inks, not water-based inks, so getting wet didn't mess up what you printed.
Currently have an Epson ET-3850 (printer / copier / scanner) with Eco-Tank. If you want a good ink-jet, buy an Epson and get on with life. If you want a laser, buy a Brother and get it over with.
These are not cheap but. buy once, cry once and use them for decades.
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My first printer was a Canon BJ-200. It was a first-generation version of this. Mine was black and white and looked nearly identical to this.
Speed, text and image qualities were all very good. It was reasonably compact and very quiet (compared to dot-matrix printers, while being much cheaper than the a laser.
Unfortunately, the ink was water-soluble. If you printed the address on an envelope (it was easy to do) and it was raining when you took the mail out to the mailbox, the rain would obliterate what you printed on it.
If your print head was all gummed up, you'd get white lines where there should be ink. Get some alcohol-based wipes and wipe the head until no more ink came off. After that, the printing worked beautifully.
After a couple years of using the heck out of that machine, I bought an Epson Stylus color ink jet and never looked back. Epson used dye-based inks, not water-based inks, so getting wet didn't mess up what you printed.
Currently have an Epson ET-3850 (printer / copier / scanner) with Eco-Tank. If you want a good ink-jet, buy an Epson and get on with life. If you want a laser, buy a Brother and get it over with.
These are not cheap but. buy once, cry once and use them for decades.
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kitchentroll5868
I still have a working Canon BJ-200 (monochrome only) that was purchased new in 1997 and still works like new, largely due to frequent, meticulous cleaning with 99% isopropyl alcohol. Ink is getting difficult to find and the cartridges do wear out, so its continued use is not long for this world. On the other hand, I had a BJC-2000 (bought new in 1998 or 1997) and it rapidly became problematic even with frequent, meticulous cleaning. I do not remember the order in which things began to go south, but I recall every problem you encountered starting to occur before the unit was 2 years old. Eventually it refused to register newly purchase, factory-fresh cartridges as full, and that was the end of that. After trying a number of color bubble-jet printers by various manufacturers (HP and Epson come to mind) that all presented issues - the HPs were always needing the driver uninstalled and reinstalled, the Epsons would burn through ink doing cleaning cycles ever time I turned them on. By 2001, I gave up on bubble-jet printers altogether and dropped the cash on an Okidata color laser printer and never looked back.
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I still have a working Canon BJ-200 (monochrome only) that was purchased new in 1997 and still works like new, largely due to frequent, meticulous cleaning with 99% isopropyl alcohol. Ink is getting difficult to find and the cartridges do wear out, so its continued use is not long for this world. On the other hand, I had a BJC-2000 (bought new in 1998 or 1997) and it rapidly became problematic even with frequent, meticulous cleaning. I do not remember the order in which things began to go south, but I recall every problem you encountered starting to occur before the unit was 2 years old. Eventually it refused to register newly purchase, factory-fresh cartridges as full, and that was the end of that. After trying a number of color bubble-jet printers by various manufacturers (HP and Epson come to mind) that all presented issues - the HPs were always needing the driver uninstalled and reinstalled, the Epsons would burn through ink doing cleaning cycles ever time I turned them on. By 2001, I gave up on bubble-jet printers altogether and dropped the cash on an Okidata color laser printer and never looked back.
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kosmosyche
One thing I do not miss about the late 90s and early 2000s is inkjet printers. And I had a couple of models back then, that were supposed to be really good, both from Epson, who were the leaders in this sector (if magazines of the time were to be believed. But, man, every time I neede to print something for my university, I basically needed to free up the whole day, because there was always something wrong with the printer. I think at some point I stopped bothering and just started printing everything I needed at the university cause it was cheaper and faster and wasn't trying to play on my nerves. Lol
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One thing I do not miss about the late 90s and early 2000s is inkjet printers. And I had a couple of models back then, that were supposed to be really good, both from Epson, who were the leaders in this sector (if magazines of the time were to be believed. But, man, every time I neede to print something for my university, I basically needed to free up the whole day, because there was always something wrong with the printer. I think at some point I stopped bothering and just started printing everything I needed at the university cause it was cheaper and faster and wasn't trying to play on my nerves. Lol
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kenland
I was certified to work on Cannon Bubblejet printers back in the late 90s. The training video was a technician field stripping a printer then putting it back together. They were an absolute nightmare. Much more complicated than the HP Inkjet printers. The hilarious part was that at the end of the training video there are a few extra screws sitting on the bench. The tech picks them up, puts them in his pocket and says Those are what we call Pocket Screws. The video ended at that. Mind you, this was the official Cannon supplied training video.
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I was certified to work on Cannon Bubblejet printers back in the late 90s. The training video was a technician field stripping a printer then putting it back together. They were an absolute nightmare. Much more complicated than the HP Inkjet printers. The hilarious part was that at the end of the training video there are a few extra screws sitting on the bench. The tech picks them up, puts them in his pocket and says Those are what we call Pocket Screws. The video ended at that. Mind you, this was the official Cannon supplied training video.
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janjohansson2567
I tried to fix an Epson printer/scanner combo. To take it apart, as described by the service manual, you literally had to permantently break a critical plastic piece to take it apart so you would have to buy replacement parts just to disassemble the damn thing.
Not to mention - if a singe print head gets clogged, the first thing to try is of course to use the head cleaning feature. You can only run it on all four heads at once. And all cartridges have to have ink. And each cleaning consumes like 1/3 of all cartridges.
F injets.
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I tried to fix an Epson printer/scanner combo. To take it apart, as described by the service manual, you literally had to permantently break a critical plastic piece to take it apart so you would have to buy replacement parts just to disassemble the damn thing.
Not to mention - if a singe print head gets clogged, the first thing to try is of course to use the head cleaning feature. You can only run it on all four heads at once. And all cartridges have to have ink. And each cleaning consumes like 1/3 of all cartridges.
F injets.
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lPsychoMax
Man this just reminded me, I still have my old HP printer on my desk and the last time I used it was on win xp. It is really REALLY old.
Since everything has gone digital, it stopped getting use and now I pretty much never use it. I don't think it's even compatible with win 7, let alone my win 10!
You never realise things like this until someone points it out or reminds you. It wasn't as troubling as this but it had it's moments where it just didn't print or said the new ink just doesn't exist; even if I just bought it XD
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Man this just reminded me, I still have my old HP printer on my desk and the last time I used it was on win xp. It is really REALLY old.
Since everything has gone digital, it stopped getting use and now I pretty much never use it. I don't think it's even compatible with win 7, let alone my win 10!
You never realise things like this until someone points it out or reminds you. It wasn't as troubling as this but it had it's moments where it just didn't print or said the new ink just doesn't exist; even if I just bought it XD
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sasiuru
Oh. that. Y2K OK! logo. BJC, when it works it works, often it doesn't and no known curse or magic will get it working - unless it itself decides to start working with no clear reason. I have had fair amount of fight with those and earlier Canon BJ-10 travel bw-bublejets.
Had 3 of those Canon BJ-10s back then. Why Because any given day at least one was on good mood to print something out without burbing all of the ink to paper on a big black blob. :D
That was back in 1997-1998.
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Oh. that. Y2K OK! logo. BJC, when it works it works, often it doesn't and no known curse or magic will get it working - unless it itself decides to start working with no clear reason. I have had fair amount of fight with those and earlier Canon BJ-10 travel bw-bublejets.
Had 3 of those Canon BJ-10s back then. Why Because any given day at least one was on good mood to print something out without burbing all of the ink to paper on a big black blob. :D
That was back in 1997-1998.
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atkelar
Based on my restoration experience so far. I'd suspect the flat flex ribbon between the printer and the head. It kinda fits with some colors not working (maybe a ground line or two are flakey or faulty) and also with the scanning head not properly working, because it might fail to transfer data to the printer. These flex print things break when stored for a long time and both my HP GPIB printers and the one Brother had issues there.
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Based on my restoration experience so far. I'd suspect the flat flex ribbon between the printer and the head. It kinda fits with some colors not working (maybe a ground line or two are flakey or faulty) and also with the scanning head not properly working, because it might fail to transfer data to the printer. These flex print things break when stored for a long time and both my HP GPIB printers and the one Brother had issues there.
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lazygamereviews
i have a imagewriter ii printer, and i tell you, one day a random piece of it broke, and weirdly, i dumped a crappy piece of a rubik's cube inside. and for whatever reason, it jammed itself in the print head and made the printer work again. it still works to this day thanks to the rubik's cube piece which is STILL in the print head. this just reminds me of your kind of lever thing on these crappy canon printers right now.
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i have a imagewriter ii printer, and i tell you, one day a random piece of it broke, and weirdly, i dumped a crappy piece of a rubik's cube inside. and for whatever reason, it jammed itself in the print head and made the printer work again. it still works to this day thanks to the rubik's cube piece which is STILL in the print head. this just reminds me of your kind of lever thing on these crappy canon printers right now.
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Mrshoujo
We bought a BJC-250 & used it with a Win95 laptop which has Microsoft Word on it. I found it very handy & versatile for printing on Postal Service Customs Declaration forms & VHS Labels. I got really good with Word in defining where text should go on custom formatting. Hella fast Black ink printing! Ink cartridges had a special airtight thingy to store them in while not using it, otherwise ink would evaporate. I miss it.
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We bought a BJC-250 & used it with a Win95 laptop which has Microsoft Word on it. I found it very handy & versatile for printing on Postal Service Customs Declaration forms & VHS Labels. I got really good with Word in defining where text should go on custom formatting. Hella fast Black ink printing! Ink cartridges had a special airtight thingy to store them in while not using it, otherwise ink would evaporate. I miss it.
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poikochan87
Oh, crap. this printer is like the worst 1990s printer experience in a nutshell. I'm genuinely surprised it didn't eat paper and then spit out in tiny bits. I used to have one of the HP printers back in the day, it worked well for many years but at the end of its life it would crap out one me when I most needed it. Why don't you try some Epson or Brother printers They are quite reliable: )
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Oh, crap. this printer is like the worst 1990s printer experience in a nutshell. I'm genuinely surprised it didn't eat paper and then spit out in tiny bits. I used to have one of the HP printers back in the day, it worked well for many years but at the end of its life it would crap out one me when I most needed it. Why don't you try some Epson or Brother printers They are quite reliable: )
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HattmannenNilsson
For an old colour laser printer, a good bet is probably to look for some HP Color LaserJet. You can most likely find toner for one and possibly even spare parts. I remember the HP laser printers being pretty reliable, but eventually even they wear out and starts chewing paper. At least that's been the failure mode on the hand-me-down HP lasers I've had (both color and monochrome.
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For an old colour laser printer, a good bet is probably to look for some HP Color LaserJet. You can most likely find toner for one and possibly even spare parts. I remember the HP laser printers being pretty reliable, but eventually even they wear out and starts chewing paper. At least that's been the failure mode on the hand-me-down HP lasers I've had (both color and monochrome.
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Kramer7969
This looks like the type of printer they gave for free with your computer from QVC. My first printer was Lexmark and I loved printing back in the 1990s. People forget that we used to print because we didn't have space to store everything so early days of internet you'd download an image and print it. I had binders full of video game images and cars from back in the day.
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This looks like the type of printer they gave for free with your computer from QVC. My first printer was Lexmark and I loved printing back in the 1990s. People forget that we used to print because we didn't have space to store everything so early days of internet you'd download an image and print it. I had binders full of video game images and cars from back in the day.
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DamonBolenbaugh
hahahaha i dont remember you dropping Bombs on YT even over a printer, very amusing but frustration is understood 100% my parents experienced the same POS issue with various printers all were junk printers and were cheap (too cheap in my opinion) best thing it can be used for now is MotorMusic kind of deal where you can hack it and make the motor make music with.
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hahahaha i dont remember you dropping Bombs on YT even over a printer, very amusing but frustration is understood 100% my parents experienced the same POS issue with various printers all were junk printers and were cheap (too cheap in my opinion) best thing it can be used for now is MotorMusic kind of deal where you can hack it and make the motor make music with.
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bz4413
Man there’s nothing like a chill Friday morning drinking coffee while just watching you troubleshoot an old printer
I vaguely remember that my parents had this and yeah I guess I’m just finding out most printers are scams I had a few in last 6-8 years but the ink ran out way too early for my liking and I stopped using them. So makes sense now to me now.
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Man there’s nothing like a chill Friday morning drinking coffee while just watching you troubleshoot an old printer
I vaguely remember that my parents had this and yeah I guess I’m just finding out most printers are scams I had a few in last 6-8 years but the ink ran out way too early for my liking and I stopped using them. So makes sense now to me now.
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MrMoogle
The prior version of that model came bundled with our Packard Bell computer the family got back in late 1995. I can still remember printing a cat photo and it took forever. But it was our first computer and printer, so we were all amazed. And then it did nothing but give us problems over the years, so we all grew to hate it as we would all future printers.
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The prior version of that model came bundled with our Packard Bell computer the family got back in late 1995. I can still remember printing a cat photo and it took forever. But it was our first computer and printer, so we were all amazed. And then it did nothing but give us problems over the years, so we all grew to hate it as we would all future printers.
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sireuchre
Wondering why not try cutting down one of the springs you had out of the 3 printers, to reduce the tension. There's other tactics for that kind of retainer mechanism (the push through with the split rod and 'barbs' to hold it, like inserting a bracing material between the split that will compress slightly, but provides enough tension to hold fairly well.
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Wondering why not try cutting down one of the springs you had out of the 3 printers, to reduce the tension. There's other tactics for that kind of retainer mechanism (the push through with the split rod and 'barbs' to hold it, like inserting a bracing material between the split that will compress slightly, but provides enough tension to hold fairly well.
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ffsireallydontcare
With the scanner not working, did you try the printer port mode in the BIOS From memory there are a couple of mode options which determine which pins are active and/or used for which function. It's been so long so my memory is fuzzy, but I seem to remember that you may need to make sure that the BIOS and Windows have matching options set.
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With the scanner not working, did you try the printer port mode in the BIOS From memory there are a couple of mode options which determine which pins are active and/or used for which function. It's been so long so my memory is fuzzy, but I seem to remember that you may need to make sure that the BIOS and Windows have matching options set.
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Gadgetman1989
Seeing you suffer with this is similar to me using my HP officejet 5610, ive found drivers and such for it no issue, but its a PiTA trying to get it to reliably both scan and print as since it sat in storage for so long its got streaks in my scans, anyway enjoyed your video Clint, hopefully you find one that will work for you
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Seeing you suffer with this is similar to me using my HP officejet 5610, ive found drivers and such for it no issue, but its a PiTA trying to get it to reliably both scan and print as since it sat in storage for so long its got streaks in my scans, anyway enjoyed your video Clint, hopefully you find one that will work for you
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