Printer help?

From: Michael Sokolov <msokolov_at_ivan.Harhan.ORG>
Date: Thu Sep 9 17:34:11 2004

der Mouse <mouse_at_rodents.montreal.qc.ca> wrote:

> I went to do this, but when I put it all back together and turned it
> on, all armed with a voltmeter to check power, when I turned it on one
> of the LEDs on the DC controller board came on, something I cannot
> recall happening before.

One of the LEDs indicates that the main motor has reached its
operating speed, the other LED indicates that the scanner motor has
reached its operating speed.

> However, the selftest button does not work; as far as I can tell it
> does nothing at all. I even tried holding it in for some 15-20 seconds
> and it still did nothing, despite printing working normally from the
> network and printing a selftest page when told to do so using the
> front-panel buttons.

Now this is weird, I have no explanation for it. It's supposed to
continuously print pages of vertical lines for as long as the switch
is down. Perhaps one of the damaged PCB traces went to this switch?

> I think this was Peter Wallace, pcw_at_mesanet.com.

Yes.

> If nobody takes it before then, and Peter isn't willing/able to, might
> _you_ be willing to extract those and send them to me?

I would certainly be willing to do it, if nothing else for the sake
of the experiment, since while logic is telling me that the IIISi and
4Si are the same printer except for those boards, I've never actually
tried a swap. The problem is that I would only be able to do it after
I get Peter's 4SiMX in my hands (that's assuming Peter wants to give
it away for free and no one else takes it first), and I don't know
when I'll be in the Bay Area. While having a source of spares for mine
would certainly be nice, I won't make a trip to the Bay Area just for
that. I normally go there twice a year for the Bay Area UFO Expo and
for Conspiracy Con, but the Bay Area UFO Expo just passed two weeks ago
and Conspiracy Con is in May. I don't think Peter would hold the printer
for me for that long.

> The former is marked as J005, the latter J014.

These are some kind of test/debug connectors and aren't used in the
field.

MS
Received on Thu Sep 09 2004 - 17:34:11 BST