![]() 07/01/2020 at 19:51 • Filed to: None | ![]() | ![]() |
It’s now printing great thanks to a new toner car tridge, and still works on Windows 10 (networked thanks to a add-in JetDirect card). With a page count of ~ 127,000, it’s just broken-in. If all you need are black and white prints, this does the job fine.
Obligatory Office Space joke.
![]() 07/01/2020 at 19:58 |
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Made in Japan, you don’t see that much anymore.
![]() 07/01/2020 at 20:00 |
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I was wondering how you plugged this in.
Can you buy a USB-C to 36-pin adapter?
![]() 07/01/2020 at 20:00 |
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Ah, the days when HP printers were built like tanks. If you have the SI versions they weigh nearly as much too.
![]() 07/01/2020 at 20:01 |
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My dad has a similar vintage large-format inkjet. He can’t get refil l cartridges for it anymore so he's got it rigged to feed from external reservoirs.
![]() 07/01/2020 at 20:03 |
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Back when HP printers were still the gold standard and not bloated hunks of crap.
![]() 07/01/2020 at 20:03 |
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I still have a 4Si and the first large format color.
![]() 07/01/2020 at 20:04 |
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Hey-Hey-Hey. Watch that talk. Some of us still yearn for HP-IB...
![]() 07/01/2020 at 20:05 |
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Even today Canon builds the laser engines...
![]() 07/01/2020 at 20:06 |
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Hey, thanks for the nostalgia flashback. I can’t tell you why that product was near-and-dear to my heart, but I had a personal attachment to it.
![]() 07/01/2020 at 20:10 |
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You can buy a USB-C to 25 pin parallel port connector, which I believe is what the LaserJet 4 uses.
I currently have it networked over ethernet.
![]() 07/01/2020 at 20:14 |
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My department had a Laserjet 5 that would still be running today if my boss hadn’t gotten a bug up his butt to replace it because of age. That was 3 printers ago, and those were all due to actual failures.
I remember running a usage page on one of our payroll printers and seeing that it had broken the 2 million page mark. Think that was a 4100.
![]() 07/01/2020 at 20:14 |
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This one supposedly weighs 52 lbs... I can’t imagine what an SI would weigh.
![]() 07/01/2020 at 20:19 |
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That thought never occurred to me. I’ve got a few of the ‘90s HP inkjets laying around yet (DeskJet 720C, Deskjet 895cxi, Deskjet 1120C) - you can still get the cartridges, but at some point that might not be the case.
Side note - I don’t keep ink in those as I never use them.
![]() 07/01/2020 at 20:19 |
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HP printers have been going downhill since the end of the ‘90s.
![]() 07/01/2020 at 20:21 |
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I get nostalgic for ‘90s computers and equipment , so I understand! The big one for me are Gateway2000 computers.
![]() 07/01/2020 at 20:22 |
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I still use my 6P regularly; the parallel-to-ethernet printserver I have on it is great too since I can print to it from any (on-network) machine.
![]() 07/01/2020 at 20:23 |
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I bet the 5 would still be running today! A page count of 2 million is quite impressive!
![]() 07/01/2020 at 20:32 |
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There’s actually companies that will sell you kits for specific manufacturers. My dad’s setup looks something like this:
An added bonus is that vials of ink are much cheaper than replacement cartridges.
![]() 07/01/2020 at 20:35 |
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I’d guess about double that.
![]() 07/01/2020 at 20:39 |
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The network aspect is great! I doubt these would work half as well these days without that capability. I’m happy that the original purchaser sprung for the JetDirect card when it was put into service - network setup couldn’t be any more simple .
![]() 07/01/2020 at 21:24 |
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They are slow as hell, and over built. They are the cockroaches of printers
I worked in computer sales and support from 2000 to 2010. I remember we called them old printers back in the early 2000s.
![]() 07/01/2020 at 21:36 |
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Nice! I finally retired my 6p last year just because nothing had a printer port anymore and it just got to be to difficult to use.
![]() 07/01/2020 at 22:01 |
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Not quite as old, but my parents are still using a Laserjet 1000 that only has USB but no Win10 drivers. It’s connected through a WinXP virtual machine. Refuses to die.
![]() 07/01/2020 at 22:11 |
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Thanks for the PC LOAD LETTER, I immediately thought of it when I saw the pic. The PS/2 lab at my high school had a plain-ol 4 that I used a bit in the early 90s and I remember seeing them around. It was pretty spiffy back then for sure. Back when the internal fonts were important. WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS and all that.
![]() 07/01/2020 at 22:45 |
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If I didn’t get a free color laser printer, and then a $25 Xerox multifunction color laser, I would still be using my 4M+. I gave it away when I moved, and I’d be willing to bet that the current owner is still using it.
Great machine, from back when HP understood what ‘quality’ meant.
![]() 07/01/2020 at 22:50 |
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Heck yeah - IEEE-488 FTW!
![]() 07/02/2020 at 10:41 |
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At this point, ancient is a good descriptor. And at 12 pages per minute, it’s not fast...