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Buying Used Printer Cartridges

cr1901

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I just got a parallel port printer (HP Deskjet 500) working, and I don't feel like paying $40 for a new cartridge direct from HP...

So... for anyone who has tried this... what are the odds of me getting screwed over by buying an expired cartridge off Ebay? I've seen expiration dates of unopened cartridges from 1995 to 2004!

Also- using printers from DOS is before my time, so can anyone tell me whether it's normal for the printer to not Feed Out the page when I redirect output from DOS to PRN (example: 'dir > PRN' prints the directory listing, but doesn't send the page out until I manually force it or power off)?

It seems as if printers are one of the few computing peripherals that has stayed consistent or increased in quality- this Deskjet manages to irritate me as much as my network printer- and then some! Why couldn't they get inkjets right WITHOUT the paper jams and stalled/dropped jobs?
 
That's very normal, as DOS doesn't have any idea of what a "print job" is.

You can just make a file with just a hex 0C (decimal 12) character in it. Copy it to PRN and you'll get a page eject. You can also create a short .COM program to do the same thing. I suspect there's also something on the SIMTEL DOS collection to do just that.
 
Inkjet printers have increased in resolution and speed but they have decreased in build quality and reliability. Paper jams tend to be caused by aged rollers more then bad designs (happens to heavy duty lasers also).

I wouldn't touch a used inkjet cartridge unless if was 100% free. Unless you plan on using the printer all the time don't bother with old inkjets, they clog and dry out from non use. An old laser printer is the way to go.
 
New lasers are cheap but laser printers with parallel ports are rare. Ones that retain HP LaserJet or Epson FX compatibility are very hard to find. You need to have both parallel port and emulation for the Laser Printer to work with old DOS based programs. A lot of really cheap laser printers available now are USB only and only work with specific Linux, modern Windows, or OSX drivers. Which means all the hardware this site specifies won't work with a brand new printer.

The classic LaserJet IV is a very good choice if one wants an old printer. That is close to an indestructible printer. Toner cartidges are cheap and last long time. Earlier LaserJets were good quality machines too but toner is getting scarce for them. Later LaserJet models often have cost reductions that reduced longevity; don't get 5P or 6P which jam a lot.

I have a Brother 2070N which seems to be their last model good for usage with vintage systems. Brother stopped manufacturing the model about 5 years ago.
 
I have a Canon 950 series printer that I bought a while back for processing photos. It does a real good good job, but the price of of cartridges makes it virtually cost prohibitive for the amateur photog, like me (it use 7 cartridges at about 14$ to 21$ a pop). I decided to take the used cartridges into a outlet for a refill, which was fairly cheap at the time, and swapped the empty ones for refills on a one-for-one basis. Unbeknownst to me, Canon has a 'chip' in those cartridges that must be reset once the container in empty. Without addressing the convoluted reset procedures, you get an "empty" warning when you try to print with those refilled cartridges. I have no idea whether or not your printer cartridges have similar restrictions, but it may be more cost effective to put everything on a thumb drive and head over to Wall-Mart/Costco/Sam's, etc.
 
...this Deskjet manages to irritate me as much as my network printer- and then some! Why couldn't they get inkjets right WITHOUT the paper jams and stalled/dropped jobs?
You're obviously easily irritated; why not clean the rollers (that is a pretty ancient printer after all), load the paper correctly, and figure out what you're doing wrong to get stalled/dropped jobs? Some of us print dozens if not hundreds of pages every day on both inkjets and lasers without problems.

Forget about old carts. Get a refill kit and refill your own; I'm pretty certain that LJ500s don't have the issue that AO describes.
 
I just got a parallel port printer (HP Deskjet 500) working, and I don't feel like paying $40 for a new cartridge direct from HP...
If you want a nice dot matrix printer come over and see me. I've got several and they've all got parallel ports! :) I still use a dot matrix printer 'cause I loathe inkjets. If you don't use them regularly the jets clog and you need a new cartridge. At least with a ribbon you know what's there is gonna work every time. Yes, it's slower than an inkjet but since I don't do much printing I guess I'll just live with it being slow. For documents the letter quality mode is comparable to inkjets. And for junk copies, draft mode is quite fast. Did I mention no paper jams and stalled/dropped jobs? :) :)
 
You're obviously easily irritated; why not clean the rollers (that is a pretty ancient printer after all), load the paper correctly, and figure out what you're doing wrong to get stalled/dropped jobs? Some of us print dozens if not hundreds of pages every day on both inkjets and lasers without problems.

Forget about old carts. Get a refill kit and refill your own; I'm pretty certain that LJ500s don't have the issue that AO describes.

I don't deny that I'm easily irritated. Since posting my little rant, I found a PDF service manual for the Deskjet 500 that told me how to load paper correctly, which I wasn't- oops. As for stalled jobs- that's normal behavior in DOS apparently (it doesn't eject paper when done). No (major) problems ever since other than the rollers sometimes don't catch a piece of paper- not sure how much that's due to mechanical wear.

As for the dot matrix printer, Stone... I live in a condo... I'm not sure my neighbors would appreciate the noise at night XD.

Well, I didn't exactly pay a lot for this inkjet ($0), so perhaps I should just look for alternate printers which will be more reliable in the long run. HP DOES still sell the correct ink cartridge direct- just costs an arm and a leg for a printer I'll use sparingly.
 
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... I loathe inkjets. If you don't use them regularly the jets clog and you need a new cartridge.
That's why you see almost new ones at the curb; the carts cost more than a new printer. I use laser printers for all my printing (colour and B/W) except for my easily refilled trusty Canon BJ10 for portable printing. Once in a while I'll dig out a dot matrix printer for a couple of special forms/applications.

At least with a ribbon you know what's there is gonna work every time.
Well, with a laser as well, but ribbons are certainly cheaper; what I do sometimes find useful is that, like an inkjet, dot matrix printers print by line instead of by page.
 
That's very normal, as DOS doesn't have any idea of what a "print job" is.
Well, it does, sorta; the PRINT command prints "print jobs" and ejects the page after each one, but offhand I don't know of a way to PRINT a redirected output like the "DIR > PRN" example.

And BTW, most printers have a button that ejects an incomplete page.
 
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The classic LaserJet IV is a very good choice if one wants an old printer. That is close to an indestructible printer. Toner cartidges are cheap and last long time.
Amen! I've been using an LJ IV since it was brand new with no problems whatsoever, and I do a fair bit of printing.
Earlier LaserJets were good quality machines too but toner is getting scarce for them.
Yup; LJ III was one of the best.
Later LaserJet models often have cost reductions that reduced longevity; don't get 5P or 6P which jam a lot.
If you mean the 5L and 6L, HP issued a no-charge upgrade kit for the 5L which usually solved the problem, although there's no way to tell if it's been installed AFAIK; can't say I've had any feed issues with the 6L.
 
Ya', and with Lexmark the carts cost nearly as much as TWO new printers!!! :)
Yeah, and although I don't know about Lexmark, as AO says at least Canon and Epson go to great lengths to prevent you from refilling the carts; presumably the extra hardware in the cart makes it even more expensive.

Another thing to watch out for is that in order to prevent the nozzles clogging many printers automatically go through a periodic cleaning cycle as long as they're plugged in, so even if you never use it you'll end up with an empty cartridge (and lots of ink in the 'sump')
 
I've got a couple of small pics that I keep around to help keep nozzles clean. If you print one of these every week that you don't use the printer you should be OK.

resolution_color-rc4s.jpg testpage10fo0.jpg

If you want the second pic (the board made it kinda small) lemme know and I'll u/l somewhere else that won't change it.
 
I've got a couple of small pics that I keep around to help keep nozzles clean. If you print one of these every week that you don't use the printer you should be OK.
It eats so much ink....

I've sworn by the LaserJet 4M Plus since I got mine in 2003. Toner lasts forever, parts are EVERYWHERE and it's compatible with EVERYTHING. Parallel, serial, AppleTalk, ASCII, PCL, PostScript....You try and print it and it will do it. Windows 7 still includes drivers for it. If you want a color laser printer some of HP's newer color units are just starting to show up at recyclers and surplus stores for pretty cheap. Toner cartridges are more expensive to replace but they still last a while and will give you WAY more life than an inkjet.
 
Well, it does, sorta; the PRINT command prints "print jobs" and ejects the page after each one, but offhand I don't know of a way to PRINT a redirected output like the "DIR > PRN" example.

And BTW, most printers have a button that ejects an incomplete page.

The PRINT command is very limited, particularly if you're sending a lot of non-plain-ASCII stuff, such as HP PCL. I can't recommend it to anyone. (Another vestige of CP/M left in DOS)

I thought that having to use the "page eject" button of the printer was the original complaint.
 
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