[sf-lug] More laser printers

[Rick Moen]

I'm still taking a leisurely stroll through the 'computers' for-sale
category at sfbay.craigslistorg .  (I restricted the category to San
Francisco itself instead of the entire Bay Area, for purposes of posting
here.)  There are quite a few laser printers, including some strange
offerings.  Here's one that caught my eye, and I wanted to make a point
about it:

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sys/d/san-francisco-hp-laserjet-p1006-compact/6787134827.html

  HP Laserjet P1006 Compact Laser Printer For PC & Mac - $20 (San
  Francisco)

As you can see in the photo, it's a compact little thing for a laser
printer.  Seller claims 16 PPM (yay) speed.  USB.  600 dpi.

Now, you really cannot go wrong at $20, if you need a B&W laser.  But
digging deeper finds interesting stuff.
http://www.openprinting.org/printer/HP/HP-LaserJet_P1006

The openprinting page says recommended driver is foo2xqx.  Eh?  What
sort of driver is that?  Dig deeper, and you find it's for 'printers
that use the HP "XQX" stream wire protocol'.  http://foo2xqx.rkkda.com/
says:

  foo2xqx is an open source printer driver for printers that use the
  HP/Software Imaging "XQX" stream wire protocol for their print data,
  such as the HP LaserJet P1005, HP LaserJet P1006, HP LaserJet P1505, and
  the HP LaserJet M1005 MFP,  These printers are often erroneously referred
  to as winprinters or GDI printers.  However, Microsoft GDI only mandates
  the API between an application and the printer driver, not the protocol
  on the wire between the printer driver and the printer.  In fact,
  "XQX" printers are raster printers which happen to use a very
  efficient wire protocol which was developed by HP/Software Imaging.
  "XQX" is just one of many wire protocols that are in use today, such as
  Postscript, PCL, Epson, ZjStream, etc.

Aha.  The picture starts to come together.  As it says, _raster_
printers.  Raster as opposed to vector, i.e., printers that accept and
print bitmaps.

Way back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was editor for San
Francisco PC User Group's 40-page monthly newsletter, _Blue Notes_.
Every issue was typeset by me in Ventura Publisher and printed on my
huge old HP LaserJet III 300x300 dpi laser printer.  One fine day, the
SFpcUG officers told me they'd gotten for free an eval unit of a better
printer, a Panasonic KX-P 6300 B&W laser printer.  They said, see?
600x600 dpi.  It's more better.  They set it up on a Windows box.

I gave the KX-P 6300 a try.  Each time an application like Ventura
Publisher generated a page to send to the printer, the host PC
application grabbed an enormous amount of RAM and ground prodigiously on
its hard drive.  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?  I checked the printer setup:
It claimed to be doing good ol' PCL4-type print language.  But wait:
Huh.  Actually, it's not really doing PCL, but rather PCL _emulation_,
and printing gets diverted into a proprietary bit of special print
engine software, which was what was chewing up all that RAM and disk
activity.  Aha aha.  Rather than sending _vector_ instructions (as in
PostScript) or text to print and printer-control codes (as in PCL), 
what was happening is that the proprietary print engine running on the
MS-Windows box accepted PCL4 as input, and generated in PC RAM a bitmap
of each page to be printed on the printer, which was then dribbled out
to the printer via the Centronics parallel port cable. 

Which explained why the KX-P 6300 was _incredibly_ slow printing
anything at all, and also while generating the pages totally killed the
performance of the attached PC -- because basically Panasonic required
the PC to do work that normally would have been carried out in the
printer's own print engine, generating the page -there-.  In other
words, HP had skimped on printer cost by omitting circuitry and required
in essence emulation of the missing printer hardware inside the attached
PC.

I informed the SFpcUG officers that, regretfully, I'd decline the
opportunity to use the demo-unit Panasonic and stick to my old LaserJet
battleship.


As the indented text suggests, other manufacturers have come up with
variations on this scheme.  Modern implementations rely on USB
connections rather than parallel, so dribbling out the bitmaps to the
printer will at least be faster than it was with the KX-P 6300 -- but in
every case you are still saddling a host computer with a bit piece of
print-engine software to generate page bitmaps.  Apparently, HP/Software
Imaging's 'XQX' protocol for compressing and transmitting to the printer
the page raster information is 'very efficient' compared to competitors'
dribbling-out methods.

And, point is, I wouldn't touch any of 'em on a bet.



Another laser:

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sys/d/san-francisco-hp-1018-laserjet-printer/6784835233.html

  HP 1018 Laserjet Printer - $40 (west portal / forest hill)

Tecnically, the correct model name is HP LaserJet 1018.  HP specs call
it as 'personal printer'.  B&W.  600 dpi.  USB.

http://www.openprinting.org/printer/HP/HP-LaserJet_1018 says the
recommended printer driver is:   foo2zjs-z1

Uh-oh.  See in the indented paragraph where it says 'ZjStream, etc.' at
the end?  That's the ZjStream protocol invented by a firm named
Zenograpics -- and it's pretty much exactly the same thing as the XQX 
stream wire protocol.  So, this is another raster printer, to which
software on the host PC dribbles out bitmaps.

I wouldn't touch any of 'em on a bet.

It's only $40, but IMO one can do a lot better, and save hair-pulling
frustration and unhappiness by aiming higher.




https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sys/d/san-francisco-brother-mfc-9130cw-all-in/6794413867.html

  Brother MFC 9130CW all-in-one printer - $60 (richmond / seacliff)
  Brother MFC 9130CW all in one wireless printer

I've learned to expect trouble from anything called a 'wireless
printer'.  It always seems to involve weird proprietary stuff that's
hostile to open source.

And, wow, apparently you have to download proprietary stuff from
Brother's Web site to have any hope of printing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/5oe2la/need_help_brother_mfc9130cw_driver/
And openprinting has nothing about it.

Just no.  Bad signs all around.




https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sys/d/san-francisco-lot-of-two-hp-laserjet/6791934029.html

   Lot Of Two HP LaserJet P4015n Network Workgroup Laser Printers - $20
   (San Francisco)
   Please note that both of these printers are reporting that they need
   their maintenance kits replaced. The print quality on both printers is
   somewhat faded due to this. You can see this in the close up images of
   the print test pages. You can use the printers as they sit but I would
   say you should plan on replacing the maintenance kits when you purchase
   these printers.

That 'n' at the end of an HP LaserJet model number is a good thing.
It's for 'network', meaning there's an ethernet port, which is not only
useful but also a sign that this is a serious printer for real
businesses, not a junky little 'personal' printer.

B&W.  1200x1200 dpi.  Ethernet, USB, and parallel.  128 MB RAM (see below).

http://www.openprinting.org/printer/HP/HP-LaserJet_P4015
Recommended driver is hplip.  Hmmpf.  That's not great, since hplip
is 'open core' code -- open source except that for many HP models
secret-sauce proprietary plug-in software is also required for the hplip
driver to function.

Better news:  HP's spec sheet lists its printing language support as:

  HP PCL6, HP PCL5e, HP Postscript level 3 emulation, directPDF (v1.4) 
  printing (Printer memory 128MB required, 192MB recommended)

This is an all-around outstanding printer, really.  You aren't stuck
with HP's hplip driver:  You can also use a generic PostScript driver,
or any of the generic PCL drivers.  There are really just two gotchas:

1.  Each of these two printers has been worked hard and long enough
that you'd need to buy a pair of $215 maintenance kits.  Worth it.
2.  Each printer has only 128 MB RAM.  That's skimpy -- and I'd be 
surprised if it were enough to do PostScript.  But, again, a replacement
512MB DDR2 SIMM costs only $13.

Even though these _real_, serious printers require more than the $20 ask
to get good value, that'd be worth every penny.  Need a good laser
printer that will be highly satisfying for many years?  Look no further.




Here are all the rest of the laser printers offered on Craigslist in San
Francisco.  Maybe I'll get to them in this spact tomorrow:

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sys/d/3-hp-laserjet-3390-multi-function/6799359372.html

   (3) HP LaserJet 3390 Multi Function Printers Copier Scanner Fax -
   $125 (San Francisco Bay Area)

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sys/d/san-francisco-hp-laserjet-4200dtn-black/6800022614.html

   HP LaserJet 4200dtn Black & White Printer - $75 (haight ashbury)

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sys/d/san-francisco-hp-laserjet-p2015dn/6800024605.html

  HP LaserJet P2015dn Duplex Printers. - $50 (haight ashbury)

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sys/d/fs-lexmark-t620-laser-printer/6800353394.html

  Lexmark T620 Laser Printer - $70 (sunset / parkside)

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sys/d/san-francisco-canon-image-class-d420/6796016688.html

  Canon Image CLASS D420 Laser ‑ Printer / copier/ scanner - $40 (bernal
  heights)

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sys/d/san-francisco-hp-m2727-printer/6800706092.html

  HP M2727 printer - $100 (pacific heights)

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sys/d/san-francisco-canon-mf4370dn-laser/6795790584.html

  Canon MF4370DN laser printer with extra cartridge - $110 (glen park)



Main point?  You don't need to buy terrible printers because they're all
you can afford at retail prices.  Buy used, and buy smart:  You'll do
better than the full-retail suckers, spend less, and get better gear.