used ones.
I don't where he got one Canon BJC model, but the clip that held the ink
cartridges in place broke because of being made of cheap plastic. So he
bought one from a 2nd hand shop here in town for $10. It had no CD or
USB cable, but it had the power cord as the model he bought was one of
those multi-function printers. Well, the USB cable was easy enough, and
I showed him a place for inexpensive refilled cartridges online, and the
drivers for XP were on the manufacturer's website.
He gets the carts and we find the printer isn't sending black ink to the
page. So we have options to check - Make sure the printer head is clean.
This is a model that the print head doesn't change with the ink
cartridges. And I do that and get it to output really nice color for
once, but still no black. I get to thinking about it, and maybe the
black refill was dry or empty. He hasn't done anything with it, in fact
it sits at his place not hooked up. I told him about how people report
it clogging up unless you run it at least once per week, and to check
for a new black cartridge.
Then about 2 weeks ago, he calls me up about a "surprise" - he bought a
bunch of computer stuff for $5 at a flea market. Some of it was junk,
and some of it had promise, like a Pentium 2 tower with Windows 2000 on
it, a system that I had to clear the BIOS / CMOS password on it, and
then clear the OS passwords with a password reset boot CD. It was a
system used by a private academy near Pittsburgh, PA. But another bit
was an HP printer. No power supply, cable, or CD. Well, no problem. HP
printers tend to be well supported, and a replacement power supply would
be $12 online. He's got the USB cable, and once again the drivers would
be on their website. This HP printer does have the print head replaced
with the ink cartridges, so that problem is moot. But he doesn't try
anything with it.
Yesterday, someone living near his place was having a yard sale and in
that bunch was yet another printer. I don't know how much he paid for
it, but he did ask if it worked, and all the guy said was his son used
it. Book, CD, and power cord included. But instead of getting cheap
refills like last time, my friend rushed out to a local office supply
store and paid for pricey brand new ink tanks, and as he tries it out,
it prints only blue.
After he brought it over for me to look at, I pretty much gave up trying
to open it up because I felt the print head was really severely clogged,
and more so after pulling a dead moth out of the unit. I couldn't do
anything more because I couldn't get at the print head to really clean
it. Plus this is one of those Epson models with a chip in the ink tank,
making refilling annoying and reinstalling a new ink tank annoying when
the printer doesn't "sense" them right. It will need really good
servicing. He didn't want to wait a week to see if it worked.
I tried to advise him to find one of these places that will take older
printers and offer a Trade In on a new model (or just buy a new one
outright and stop buying the used ones because that's the reason they're
being sold - they stopped working for some reason). He tried to recycle
his Canon BJC printer and they were going to _charge_ him $10 to do it.
I've heard of printer trade-in promotions before; he just needs to find
some place around here that still does that. He should get a
multi-function printer unit.
re: Ranma 1/2 -
My project to backup my Ranma 1/2 VHS subtitled tapes is not taking as
long as I thought it would, nor as many DVDs as I originally estimated.
I was up until 2:43 am playing Ookami for the PS2 last night.
No comments:
Post a Comment