SOLVED Old Piece of Parallel Junk (aka Printer) Help Please

I have a relatively old printer, an HP Deskjet 722C, which is on a parallel interface (hence the title). Its worked for 2 and a half years or so with no problem. However, it has started to act up; when I send a print job, it prints about the first half inch and then freezes. This happens in any situation, even with a test page. I recently reformatted as regular maintenance, and with a bare installation, this same problem occurs.

Any tips on how to coax a page out of my legacy hunk of junk?

Have you tried taking the cover off and cleaning out the dust? While it's open, look for any parts that are obviously damaged.

I have, and I don't see anything obvious. Its able to load, start actual printing for the first 2 lines or so, and when its powered off, its able to fully output the paper, even if its blank. Im looking into an alternate driver, but perhaps its a good excuse for an upgrade.

Have you tried playing with the Standard/Ecp/Epp settings as well as the dma parallel port settings in your systems bios setup screen?

You could always try another cable as well. I had one go bad once with similar results.

Al

Yeah, first thing I'd do is try a new cable and even another machine if you had the chance. (I've seen parallel ports on boards act up before, 'specially on AT boards).

Another thing you might try is searching HP's site for firmware upgrades. THe printers firmware could have become corrupt. I know we have a few printers at work that have upgradeable firmwares...usually as simple as telling the printer control program in Windows to upload the new firmware to the printer.

Its the printer version of fdsik/reinstall.

No free lunch though...there is the risk you could fry the printer if the power goes out during the firmware flash...just like a BIOS flash. Depends on how the printer does its thing though...

Mike

Thanks guys, I won't have time to try stuff out now, but its a step in the right direction.

Dumbass me forgot about BIOS settings, and I had played around with mine extensively recently, including some CMOS resets

EDIT: dialup sucks (double post)