So a few months ago a friend sent me a photo on my phone of what looked like some old printers asking if I was interested in them. One looked like a large format plotter - so I figured what the heck and told him yeah I'd take that one. But turned out they were his bosses and his boss wanted them all gone. Ok, fine I'll take all of them as long as they're free (Figure I can strip the others down for parts if nothing else.)
But it then became a game of tag trying to setup a time to go get them. Whenever I was available he wasn't and when he was I wasn't. Also turned out his boss was having second thoughts about just giving them away. But eventually his boss decided he really wanted the space in their shop back and said "have your friend come get these things out of here or put them in the dumpster!". So last week I got a call to come pick them up over lunch one day.
Turned out the plotter is an HP Designjet 600 that if I'm interpreting it's build code correctly dates from 1991. I was hoping for an old pen plotter because I always liked watching them work and I'd seen a few with an open paper path so there was a chance of doing something like printing right on foam board. But the 600 is a pretty nice machine, built like a tank and capable of doing E/A1 size prints (24"x34") using 24" roll paper. It prints a full sheet in about the same or less time than my laser takes to print out all the letter size sheets for a set of plans, but no more taping and it's extremely accurate.
The other two turned out to be a more recent vintage HP color LaserJet 9500hdn (about 2007 era) which is a beast of a machine - 300lbs, 4 paper trays (over 3,000 sheet capacity!) full duplex printing - the works. The third machine turned out to be a collator to go with the color laser. I really don't have any interest in either of them...but took them so I could get the free plotter. I did fire up the laser and it works - but it's internal hard drive is missing which may be an issue for the kinds of giant print jobs it was designed for but doesn't bother me any. The bigger issue is the cost of consumables on that thing - about $200 per cartridge for each of the 4 toner cartridges it uses and same for the image drums. Though thankfully it turns out the lowest toner/drum combo has almost 20% life left which is still 6,000 pages. But it's the size of a small refrigerator and is an energy hog so I really have no use for it and will try to find it a new home because it's just too nice to strip for parts.
Back to my new plotter though. It was in rough shape. Covered in dust and looked like it had been splashed with something. But it had what looked like about a half roll of paper in it and the guy getting rid of it basically said it stopped being used because HP stopped making drivers for it after Windows XP. It predates USB but quite some time so it only has serial and parallel connections...oh but it does have a network card so that was promising. For free I was willing to risk it.
I did some initial cleanup on it and tried to power it up...it made it most of the way through the initialization but then flashed an error about the window needing to be closed and gave a system error 010001. A bit of work on google turned up a service manual and I found that sure enough error 010001 means something is wrong with the window sensor. Tried to figure out how to get to the sensor...but no luck. Thankfully the service manual had good instructions on disassembly/assembly as well!
When I got the end cover off the problem was apparent. Something had been living in here. Or at least storing food in here. It was packed with old dog food! No bedding or feces which I normally see when a mouse has moved in...but one or two spots that looked like urine stains. Fun. Got all that cleaned up and noticed that the ribbon cable connecting the front panel to the main control board was damaged. 4 wires on it were broken. But with the work on my ultra cheap quad with a homebrewed flight controller I've gotten quite good at soldering ribbon cable so I cut out the damaged sections, soldered in some new wire...and sure enough the window sensor worked again!
With that fixed I tried to load paper. After almost an hour of trying and failing repeatedly I finally read the manual. Yep...it should be sucking the paper in and isn't. Few more diagnostics and it's confirmed...the media sensor isn't responding. It's wires run in the same general area so I was pretty sure I knew what the problem would be. Took the covers back off and sure enough it looks like whatever was living in there went in and out through the same hole these wires ran though and eventually broke them against a metal edge. Took a bit longer to find the actual media sensor since it was about 8" away and the wires to it were totally missing. Eventually I found it and it looked ok...but only one leg still had any wire with insulation on it so I had no idea which wire went to which leg:
(Look close above the repaired wires and you can see the broken media sensor wires)
Did some more googling but couldn't find any photos of the sensor that would let me figure out which leg went to which wire. Did find that the sensor is just an omrom part available for <$8 new...but if you buy it from HP it goes for $50-$100! Then I found this site: http://www.myolddesignjet.com/ and contacted the owner to see if she could help me figure out which wire went to which pin. She replied back very quickly and was extremely helpful. Sent me two sets of photos of a stock sensor showing the wires.
Wired up a new harness...and after a few tries I was able to get paper loaded!
And there I was stuck for a few days because both ink cartridges in it were long dry, and while they're still available they aren't common enough to be available in any of my local stores. Being stupid cheap I ordered 2 "new" old stock expired carts off of ebay for $6 each...and then an hour or two later ordered 2 slightly more expensive remanufacured cartridges off of amazon for $12 each - because despite being cheap I'm also impatient and they qualified for free 2nd day shipping with my prime membership.
The amazon carts were scheduled for delivery tomorrow - but UPS bumped them up a day and they showed up today! Which was nice because the ebay carts didn't even ship until today
So of course as soon as I got home I had to put those bad boys in and see if I had gotten this thing working! First it was looking sketchy...the plotter wouldn't complete a pen alignment It was making marks on the paper...but they were faint and apparently too inconsistent for the printers sensors to register. Tried a few more times but each alignment uses about 6" of paper and I got tired of wasting paper on that - so I decided to try printing a demo plot despite the pens not being aligned. It "worked". The overall design of the demo plot was recognizable...but it wasn't very good at all. The lines were jagged, the ink was faint, none of the text was legible and there were large gaps. I started to suspect that my remanufactured cartridges were old and the ink was no good.
But the print did look better at the end than it did at the start...so I tried printing a configuration plot. It came out better! So I did another demo plot, better still! After a few more demo plots I tried another pen alignment...but still no go. Ran a few internal alignment and test routines and it got better...the left pen was now reporting as OK but the right was still saying no good. But it aligned enough that the jaggy lines were now smooth and the only real problem was what looked like a clogged nozzle causing a gap in the print pattern. And for printing FT plans that's totally acceptable for me!
So next I had to try and find a way to get my computer to talk to it! I grabbed an ethernet cable and plugged it into a nearby router...I had experimented with this while waiting on ink and hadn't gotten very far. The card in it supports BOOTP for autoconfiguration - but apparently not DHCP. And my router supports DHCP but not BOOTP. So I tried it the hard way instead and manually configured the network settings. Very tedious on this printer - you have to enter each part of the IP address separately due to the small display! So setting it as 192.168.0.200 took 4 separate screens, then four more for the network mask and four more for the gateway. Ugh. Still, once that was done I could ping it successfully so it seemed the network card worked! This is a very good thing since if the network option didn't work I may have had a bit of a problem. This thing is big. We have no room for it in the house! But since the network option works I can put it in my detached office off a wireless bridge and still print to it...the wife appreciates that part very much
Now the fun of getting windows to talk to it. Apparently even Windows 7 still has stock drivers for these old printers. They aren't listed alphabetically though so they're easy to overlook, and they don't show up by default so you have to hit the "windows update" button and wait about 10 minutes for windows to get a full list of drivers. And once I did have the DesignJet drivers showing there were drivers for just about every HP designJet made except the 600 Being equal parts brave and foolhardy I tried some drivers for a slightly older model and sent a copy of the FT Racer plans to it.
They printed! But they printed sized for 8x10 paper in one corner of the 24"x33" sheet. And the text and images looked horrible...the lines for the plans looked good though. Alas, at that point I hit my daughters bedtime which means I can't use my newest nicest computer (which I had been testing from) since it's too close to her room. I had to switch to my workhorse which is still running Vista.
Did the same thing on the vista machine to get drivers...only this time I just got garbage when I tried to print Did some more research and found that apparently 64bit XP drivers (which did still support this model) will work in 64bit vista (which my workhorse is running) and Win7 - they'll just complain about being unsigned when you install them. So I grabbed the xp drivers, pointed vista at them...and had a printer showing up now recognized correctly! Set the paper size...hit print...and got the first page of FT-3D plans (first ones I saw in my folder) spit out a minute or two later! For some reason I have yet to determine some of the text didn't show up...but the plans themselves came out GREAT!
The only real "problem" is that FT plans are actually larger than 24"x33" even though they're designed to be used with 20"x30" foamboard So my options are to still have one seam to tape and use 2 sheets for each page...or open the plans in photoshop and re-arrange the pieces on them so they fit on a single A1 sized sheet. Still beats the heck out of taping a dozen or so pieces of letter paper together!
Unfortunately doing all the test prints and pen alignments really sucked up the paper. The partial roll that came with it is now almost gone. Staples has 150' rolls of actual HP paper for <$15 so I ordered one to be shipped to my local store but it won't be here until Thursday at the soonest. So I have to be careful not to run out of paper before that gets here
Once that new roll of paper arrives though...I think it's time to build some more planes! I've had a pile of servos sitting here waiting and a stack of pre-minwaxed foamboard waiting for me and I've been putting off building because I hate taping up plans so much! Racer, Dusty, 3D, speedster....time to expand my fleet!
But it then became a game of tag trying to setup a time to go get them. Whenever I was available he wasn't and when he was I wasn't. Also turned out his boss was having second thoughts about just giving them away. But eventually his boss decided he really wanted the space in their shop back and said "have your friend come get these things out of here or put them in the dumpster!". So last week I got a call to come pick them up over lunch one day.
Turned out the plotter is an HP Designjet 600 that if I'm interpreting it's build code correctly dates from 1991. I was hoping for an old pen plotter because I always liked watching them work and I'd seen a few with an open paper path so there was a chance of doing something like printing right on foam board. But the 600 is a pretty nice machine, built like a tank and capable of doing E/A1 size prints (24"x34") using 24" roll paper. It prints a full sheet in about the same or less time than my laser takes to print out all the letter size sheets for a set of plans, but no more taping and it's extremely accurate.
The other two turned out to be a more recent vintage HP color LaserJet 9500hdn (about 2007 era) which is a beast of a machine - 300lbs, 4 paper trays (over 3,000 sheet capacity!) full duplex printing - the works. The third machine turned out to be a collator to go with the color laser. I really don't have any interest in either of them...but took them so I could get the free plotter. I did fire up the laser and it works - but it's internal hard drive is missing which may be an issue for the kinds of giant print jobs it was designed for but doesn't bother me any. The bigger issue is the cost of consumables on that thing - about $200 per cartridge for each of the 4 toner cartridges it uses and same for the image drums. Though thankfully it turns out the lowest toner/drum combo has almost 20% life left which is still 6,000 pages. But it's the size of a small refrigerator and is an energy hog so I really have no use for it and will try to find it a new home because it's just too nice to strip for parts.
Back to my new plotter though. It was in rough shape. Covered in dust and looked like it had been splashed with something. But it had what looked like about a half roll of paper in it and the guy getting rid of it basically said it stopped being used because HP stopped making drivers for it after Windows XP. It predates USB but quite some time so it only has serial and parallel connections...oh but it does have a network card so that was promising. For free I was willing to risk it.
I did some initial cleanup on it and tried to power it up...it made it most of the way through the initialization but then flashed an error about the window needing to be closed and gave a system error 010001. A bit of work on google turned up a service manual and I found that sure enough error 010001 means something is wrong with the window sensor. Tried to figure out how to get to the sensor...but no luck. Thankfully the service manual had good instructions on disassembly/assembly as well!
When I got the end cover off the problem was apparent. Something had been living in here. Or at least storing food in here. It was packed with old dog food! No bedding or feces which I normally see when a mouse has moved in...but one or two spots that looked like urine stains. Fun. Got all that cleaned up and noticed that the ribbon cable connecting the front panel to the main control board was damaged. 4 wires on it were broken. But with the work on my ultra cheap quad with a homebrewed flight controller I've gotten quite good at soldering ribbon cable so I cut out the damaged sections, soldered in some new wire...and sure enough the window sensor worked again!
With that fixed I tried to load paper. After almost an hour of trying and failing repeatedly I finally read the manual. Yep...it should be sucking the paper in and isn't. Few more diagnostics and it's confirmed...the media sensor isn't responding. It's wires run in the same general area so I was pretty sure I knew what the problem would be. Took the covers back off and sure enough it looks like whatever was living in there went in and out through the same hole these wires ran though and eventually broke them against a metal edge. Took a bit longer to find the actual media sensor since it was about 8" away and the wires to it were totally missing. Eventually I found it and it looked ok...but only one leg still had any wire with insulation on it so I had no idea which wire went to which leg:
(Look close above the repaired wires and you can see the broken media sensor wires)
Did some more googling but couldn't find any photos of the sensor that would let me figure out which leg went to which wire. Did find that the sensor is just an omrom part available for <$8 new...but if you buy it from HP it goes for $50-$100! Then I found this site: http://www.myolddesignjet.com/ and contacted the owner to see if she could help me figure out which wire went to which pin. She replied back very quickly and was extremely helpful. Sent me two sets of photos of a stock sensor showing the wires.
Wired up a new harness...and after a few tries I was able to get paper loaded!
And there I was stuck for a few days because both ink cartridges in it were long dry, and while they're still available they aren't common enough to be available in any of my local stores. Being stupid cheap I ordered 2 "new" old stock expired carts off of ebay for $6 each...and then an hour or two later ordered 2 slightly more expensive remanufacured cartridges off of amazon for $12 each - because despite being cheap I'm also impatient and they qualified for free 2nd day shipping with my prime membership.
The amazon carts were scheduled for delivery tomorrow - but UPS bumped them up a day and they showed up today! Which was nice because the ebay carts didn't even ship until today
So of course as soon as I got home I had to put those bad boys in and see if I had gotten this thing working! First it was looking sketchy...the plotter wouldn't complete a pen alignment
It was making marks on the paper...but they were faint and apparently too inconsistent for the printers sensors to register. Tried a few more times but each alignment uses about 6" of paper and I got tired of wasting paper on that - so I decided to try printing a demo plot despite the pens not being aligned. It "worked". The overall design of the demo plot was recognizable...but it wasn't very good at all. The lines were jagged, the ink was faint, none of the text was legible and there were large gaps. I started to suspect that my remanufactured cartridges were old and the ink was no good.But the print did look better at the end than it did at the start...so I tried printing a configuration plot. It came out better! So I did another demo plot, better still! After a few more demo plots I tried another pen alignment...but still no go. Ran a few internal alignment and test routines and it got better...the left pen was now reporting as OK but the right was still saying no good. But it aligned enough that the jaggy lines were now smooth and the only real problem was what looked like a clogged nozzle causing a gap in the print pattern. And for printing FT plans that's totally acceptable for me!
So next I had to try and find a way to get my computer to talk to it! I grabbed an ethernet cable and plugged it into a nearby router...I had experimented with this while waiting on ink and hadn't gotten very far. The card in it supports BOOTP for autoconfiguration - but apparently not DHCP. And my router supports DHCP but not BOOTP. So I tried it the hard way instead and manually configured the network settings. Very tedious on this printer - you have to enter each part of the IP address separately due to the small display! So setting it as 192.168.0.200 took 4 separate screens, then four more for the network mask and four more for the gateway. Ugh. Still, once that was done I could ping it successfully so it seemed the network card worked! This is a very good thing since if the network option didn't work I may have had a bit of a problem. This thing is big. We have no room for it in the house! But since the network option works I can put it in my detached office off a wireless bridge and still print to it...the wife appreciates that part very much
Now the fun of getting windows to talk to it. Apparently even Windows 7 still has stock drivers for these old printers. They aren't listed alphabetically though so they're easy to overlook, and they don't show up by default so you have to hit the "windows update" button and wait about 10 minutes for windows to get a full list of drivers. And once I did have the DesignJet drivers showing there were drivers for just about every HP designJet made except the 600
Being equal parts brave and foolhardy I tried some drivers for a slightly older model and sent a copy of the FT Racer plans to it. 
They printed! But they printed sized for 8x10 paper in one corner of the 24"x33" sheet. And the text and images looked horrible...the lines for the plans looked good though. Alas, at that point I hit my daughters bedtime which means I can't use my newest nicest computer (which I had been testing from) since it's too close to her room. I had to switch to my workhorse which is still running Vista.
Did the same thing on the vista machine to get drivers...only this time I just got garbage when I tried to print
Did some more research and found that apparently 64bit XP drivers (which did still support this model) will work in 64bit vista (which my workhorse is running) and Win7 - they'll just complain about being unsigned when you install them. So I grabbed the xp drivers, pointed vista at them...and had a printer showing up now recognized correctly! Set the paper size...hit print...and got the first page of FT-3D plans (first ones I saw in my folder) spit out a minute or two later! For some reason I have yet to determine some of the text didn't show up...but the plans themselves came out GREAT! 
The only real "problem" is that FT plans are actually larger than 24"x33" even though they're designed to be used with 20"x30" foamboard
So my options are to still have one seam to tape and use 2 sheets for each page...or open the plans in photoshop and re-arrange the pieces on them so they fit on a single A1 sized sheet. Still beats the heck out of taping a dozen or so pieces of letter paper together!
Unfortunately doing all the test prints and pen alignments really sucked up the paper. The partial roll that came with it is now almost gone. Staples has 150' rolls of actual HP paper for <$15 so I ordered one to be shipped to my local store but it won't be here until Thursday at the soonest. So I have to be careful not to run out of paper before that gets here
Once that new roll of paper arrives though...I think it's time to build some more planes! I've had a pile of servos sitting here waiting and a stack of pre-minwaxed foamboard waiting for me and I've been putting off building because I hate taping up plans so much! Racer, Dusty, 3D, speedster....time to expand my fleet!
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