[plug] Laserjet 2550 free to good home.

[Brad Campbell]

G'day all,

I need to divest myself of my much loved Laserjet 2550. It's well 
supported by Linux, has a USB interface and I maxed out the RAM years ago.

It's had a new drum not all that long ago, though the yellow toner is 
running low (still prints, but the replacement light is on - which tends 
to mean it will run out just when you are in the middle of a critical 
document and don't have a spare cart). The rest are ok.

I'm only passing it on as it has been orphaned by an older, but bigger 
and faster machine. There is nothing wrong with it and I'd love to see 
it go to a better home.

First in, best dressed.

While I'm here, I also have an A0 monochrome photocopier/printer/scanner 
to divest myself of.

It's built like a brick s***house. Weighs 980KG and you need a lift tail 
truck with a 1 tonne lift to move it. It comes with a new "Web" (which 
is a fibrous lubricating doo-dad that slowly consumes as you print with 
it). The web on the machine has about 50% left anyway (which is probably 
good for another 50,000 or so prints)

It's a KIP 7090. I got it from a print-shop as I needed some A0 prints 
and Officeworks was killing me. It has an accompanying DOS PC that talks 
to it. I also have a Windows NT4 Hard disk that I bought to upgrade it 
with, but ran out of incentive when I got it working with the DOS PC and 
cups on a linux box.

I have a lovely little bash script that uses ghostscript to pretend to 
be a printer, which converts the print files to TIF's and pops them in a 
directory on a Linux box that the DOS box can see over the network. It 
then converts the 1 bit TIF files to its own raster format and submits 
them to the printer.

It's native A0, 400DPI scan/print/copy. It's a fussy bugger to run with 
its own little quirks. There is almost no service documentation on it 
and my maintenance has been limited to lubrication and re-stringing the 
corona wires and grid (80uM gold plated steel). It needs a 20A flat-pin 
single phase socket for the printer, and a TCP/IP SMB network for the 
DOS machine.

I love it, but it's about the size of half a Mini, and I just don't have 
the volume of printing anymore to justify the space the damn thing takes up.

Let me be perfectly clear. If you want a machine that "just works", it's 
not the machine for you. It has a startup routine that must be followed 
religiously, it can be cantankerous and it can take some coaxing to get 
it started in the morning (the odd paper jam until it warms up).

Having said that it comes with a new web, and enough toner to last you a 
hundred thousand prints or so. It'll run through a 150M roll of paper 
without batting an eyelid and it'll print and scan A0 or smaller (I've 
done A4 by using an A3 roll in landscape mode) all day. It had just 
under a million pages on it when I got it, and I paid just over $1000 
for it. It's got just over a million pages on it now and I'm offering it 
as free to a good home. (At officeworks printing prices it has paid for 
itself twice over, so my gain is your gain)

It cost me $270 to get two men in a van to move it from West Perth to 
Cottesloe. I don't want anything for it, I just want it to go to a 
loving home. You can see it run, look at the configuration required to 
run it and take it as is with all spare parts, half a roll of A0 and 
almost a whole roll of A3 paper. 4 spare bottles of toner (I think, 
might be 3), controller PC (not required to copy, just scan and print), 
spare PCI controller card, extra NT4 hard disk that I imported from the 
US and never used and any assistance and expertise I've gleaned about 
the xerographic process while owning it.

Oh, and a little bit of left over gold plated steel wire (probably 
enough to re-string 2 or 3 corona or grid wires).

The 2550 can be collected from my place in Dianella. The KIP is going to 
require planning, some careful movers, a truck and a burning desire to 
own an A0 laser printer/copier (and some technical nouse to run it and 
not get killed by the 6KV corona voltages).

I can recommend good movers, but please think it over carefully. This is 
a *BIG* machine, with a large hunger for power and some fairly big 
quirks. If I had it to do over, I'd still have bought it, but it was an 
uphill struggle to get it running initially (it had been sitting for a 
number of years).

I'm not kidding about either the size or weight of this machine. It 
takes half a car space in the garage, and I had to push it up-hill to 
get it there. It's big and it's heavy.