iiiiiiitttttttttttt

Printers are complicated and patent encumbered. Framework took a look at making one, and they noped right out.

So you are telling me, that there was a time when peinters werent the hell-spawn that they are now?

Last job I had, I got tasked with setting up a server that would talk to all our network printers over SNMP and monitor their print counts and toner levels. In the process of that, I learned that one of our old LaserJet 8000s had 1.2 million pages printed over its 20 years of life. Old girl was still chugging along and never needed anything but toner.

my boss tossed a 4mp because 'it was noisy'. Took it home, cleaned the belts, then continued to use it for 12 years before replacing it with a brother color laser.

Man HP used to make awesome shit. Damned shame what they became.

I'd consider it for myself if I was still in the market for a new name.

Is this loss?

Disassembly of these are pretty easy, when I did tech support for HP, I could tear one down to where I could access those motors in a few minutes. Newer ones were progressively more difficult, but the "business class" printers were always relatively easy to repair.

The difficult part would indeed be sourcing the correct motor, fortunately the 4050 only has one motor, and from a quick google search it can be bought for about $20.

That being said, I doubt it's the motor - I never encountered a failed motor on a 4000-series laserjet. It's more likely a worn roller, paper sensor, or the solenoid that handles the paper pickup that has failed.

The real issues are the pinch rollers.

These printers are getting so old that Windows doesn't ship drivers anymore. I had a LaserJet 5si, and I took that as a sign that it was time to go. Yes, I could have done some tricks to extend that out, but if Windows doesn't have drivers, then spare parts are going to be increasingly difficult to come by.

I wouldn't be surprised if OP's IT department is making a similar judgement.

I was kind of surprised to see one of those still running for 26 years until I reached that part of the letter, although in my experience those old LaserJets were pretty robust compared to the more consumer-oriented devices of that era, let alone today’s models which mainly exist to lock buyers into ink subscriptions.

Most likely, yes.

edit: its from 2022.

Possibly 2014, to account for LJ's traineeship.

On April Fools Day many many years ago, I set the office printer (a sister model to this one) to say "Out of cheese", which got one person very confused. I thought about making it say insert coin, but if anyone actually did it, it would be me having to fix that printer, and it was our most beloved printer in the office, so I decided on just the clearly absurd

$10,000/gallon. If someone made a car than ran on ink, they could bankrupt themselves very efficiently.