Howdy All,
Last night I picked up a bunch of old equipment that needed a new home: A couple of 17" Monitors (One being a really nice Sony Trinitron true-flat CRT), some keyboards, an old 486 tower, a Mac Portable and a LaserWriter Select 360.
All in all, I'm happy with my score, but I have some questions about the LaserWriter:
1) I powered it on to see if it would work, and I got a test page come out of it. The toner cartridge is weak, but I'm getting streaks down the left and right side of the page. They're about 1-1.5" in width and cover practically the entire page. I've googled, but I haven't found any information except "clean the printer". I've never had a laser before, and I don't know what in particular needs to be cleaned. Does anyone have any idea how to remedy this?
2) Toner: Does anyone know of a good source to get toner cartridges for this beast? I've been poking around on the internet and they appear to be in the $60USD range. Does anyone else have better sources? What's the typical page yield per toner cartridge on these rigs? I've read online that there are (apparently) ways to fill the toner cartridge yourself, but other places say that it isn't a good idea. Any one have any experience with this?
3) Life-expectancy: From what I can glean from the Test Page, there's been ~55 000 pages come through this rig. I've seen reports of these LaserWriters go for 200 000+ pages, but again, does anyone have any "real world" performance experience with this printer?
4) Connectivity: This rig has a PC Parallel connection as well as a Mac Serial connection. I have a Quicksilver that I'd (ideally) like to hook it up to. I realize that there are none of those ports on the Quicksilver, however. I'll see if I can find my AsantéTalk, or failing that, hook up an LC 475 or old Powerbook as a print server. The print server would probably be easiest, but it'd be a power hog, would it not? Does anyone have any other ideas?
Ideally, I'd like to set this printer up on my network to handle the black and white printouts to take the load off my inkjet, but I have to see if it is cost-effective (based on the toner & power costs) to go with either pure inkjet, or a combo of inkjet and laser.
Thanks for all your help!
Cheers,
The Czar
I've encountered the streaking problem before, and it was due to the ink cart. If you're figure you're going to replace the cart anyway, you can try cleaning the metallic roller inside with a lint-free cloth made tacky with a bit of windex.
A new toner cartridge, with just casual use should last you nearly forever. As an example, a new cart in my 16/600 printed off about four camera-ready copies of entire university texts before I finally sold it. The cost per page for a laser is significantly cheaper than, say, an inkjet.
Less than 55K pages printed is pretty good. I had a LaserJet 4MV that was at 210K and still printed okay, but it was showing its age.
The printer will run well off an Asante box, and I'd say that's probably a better bet than running a server. If you can't find your asante, I'm pretty sure I've got a spare.
BTW, nice haul! How's the condition of the Portable?
1) Get the shop manual which has a useful troubleshooting section. (hint, see my sig -Applish goodies-) On the face of it however, it sounds like the toner cart's waste hopper is full and/or leaky. Cart replacement would be the cure, along with running a few (dozen?) pages to clean out any other dirty rollers.
2) The LW360 is apparently based on the Fuji Xerox P1 engine, so a search for related toner carts might find some better deals
3) Haven't had one of these particular beasties, but in my experience laser printers should be evaluated on their actual condition, not on the number of pages printed. If it currently delivers an acceptable quality print, it'll probably continue to do so for far more pages than you're likely to print.
4) The LW360 is an AppleTalk networkable printer, so I'd strongly concur with eeun to dig out that Asante ethernet bridge, rather than kludging together a print server solution.
For me, the biggest selling point for most folks printing black and white is you don't have to worry about the laser printer's toner drying up between uses. The worst part of inkjets is their annoying tendancy to be useless after sitting unused for a few weeks. A laser printer is always ready to go, even after long periods of inactivity.
Oh, and one other thing. If the LW's internal rubber paper handling rollers are hardened with age, you'll want to weigh the cost of replacement rollers against the cost of a new laser printer. Frequently, a new printer can cost little more than refurbing the old.
hth,
dan k
Thanks everyone for your valuable information! I'm looking forward to getting some time (hopefully this weekend) to be able to clean the printer properly. I'll post my results here as they develop.
eeun, would you be able to tell me the specific power requirements of your Asante box? I don't think I ever received a power adaptor with mine. Thanks.
The Portable is in fine shape, by the looks of it. I haven't had much time to play with it, unfortunately, but I do know that it's running Sys 6.0.4 with 2MB RAM and the original Connor 40MB HD. It's even got the original Apple-Branded battery! It's very picky about booting though, as the bundled power adaptor doesn't provide enough power to spin up the harddrive (using a PB100 series wall wart fixes this problem).
Cheers,
The Czar
Last night I hooked the LW up to my PB1400 and ran about 25 pages of text through it. The vertical lines running down the length of the page are significantly reduced, almost to the point of being non-existant. It also appears that the toner cartridge has more life on it than I thought, as the printouts are now uniformly dark. I'll try and scan in the before and after images of the printer's performance later tonight.
Thanks again for your help.
Cheers,
The Czar
I haven't got the original Asante adaptor, but I can run it off a 2 amp 12 VAC adaptor. IIRC, the actual Asante adaptors varied between 800 mA - 1.2 A.
I dug out my AsantéTalk bridge tonight and hooked everything up, and lo-and-behold, she works! I printed off my Sociology assignment from it, and there are no streaks and no smudges what-so-ever. I'm thoroughly impressed with this printer! I had promised before and after pictures, but I cannot find my scanner. I'll try and post them ASAP though.
One further question: Should I leave the printer on 24/7, or shut it off when I'm not using it? I find that when the toner gets cool, it doesn't print as well. Thoughts?
Thanks again guys (and gals)!
Cheers,
The Czar
Hey congrats on your new printer!
Unless you're printing regularly I'd suggest you shut it off. It uses quite a bit of power keeping the fuser hot, though IIRC the LW360 goes into some sort of low(ish) power mode after some period of inactivity. Just start the printer 5 mins before you print, it'll be plenty hot by then.
The toner doesn't get hot BTW, just that fuser assembly, which typically consists of a hollow roller with a powerful (500W-1000W) quartz-halogen light inside.
dan k
I've been using the printer regularily and I'm quite impressed with it. Only thing is, each time I power it on it prints a Diagnostic Page. I've Googled it for days now, and haven't been able to come up with anything. I saw that I need to use the LaserWriter Utility to turn it off, but I can't, for the life of me, find the option to turn that page off in the Utility that comes with OS 8.x or 9.x.
Can anyone tell me how I'd change that setting?
Thanks,
The Czar
Isn't there a set of DIPs or a rotary select switch on the back panel somewhere? IIRC One setting will make it print the startup page and another will startup without.
Would this be kinda like what you're talking about? I don't see any information on there about the switch position and the Diagnostic Page. I'll give it a go tomorrow with all the different settings.
Cheers,
The Czar
That is it, but it does differnt things than I remembered. So I don't recall correctly.
I knew the switch was there, but I though there was something about changing the starup page in the switch settings too.