[plug] Laserjet 2550 free to good home.

[Bob Adamson]

Shotgun the Laserjet! It will bring the marvel of colour printing to the 
computer club ;)

Andrew Adamson
UCC President
bob at ucc.asn.au

|"The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live."     |
| ---Peter's Laws                                                        |

On Tue, 27 Sep 2011, Brad Campbell wrote:

> 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.
> 
> 
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