HP IIIP Prints Garbage - It's Not The Printer

[Dick]

A friend of mine has an HP IIIP that he wanted to start using again,
but it prints only garbage. He assumed there was something wrong with
it, but I took my laptop to his house today with the IIIP driver
installed (I also have an HP IIIP) and his worked perfectly on my
computer. So it's not the printer. His computer is a relatively new
Dell 4500 running Windows XP Home, the same as my laptop. We
uninstalled the IIIP from his Dell and reinstalled using the XP
driver. Again, same as mine. As soon as you plug the parallel cable
into the Dell the printer begins printing, with only garbage coming
out. What could be wrong with the Dell parallel port that would cause
this? Is there a way to test a parallel port?

Dick

 

[reply]

Most newer computers, those that still have parallel ports, have them set too
fast for the trusty old IIIP. I thought I'd have to discard a number of such
printers at our humane society until I searched internet for the fix. The
settings for the parallel ports seem to use different names in different
motherboards, but the idea is to set the ports to be more old-fashioned.

Reboot and use DEL key, or F1, or whatever key is needed to get into CMOS
setup. Search around till you find the settings for the parallel port. On
my hom computer choices are SPP, EPP, ECP, ECP+EPP, & Normal. My setting of
ECP works, and I also know normal works. On some of the computers at our
humane society the appropriate choice was simply called bidrectional.


On Sun, 11 Dec 2005 19:57:15 -0700, Dick <LeadWinger> wrote:

|A friend of mine has an HP IIIP that he wanted to start using again,
|but it prints only garbage. He assumed there was something wrong with
|it, but I took my laptop to his house today with the IIIP driver
|installed (I also have an HP IIIP) and his worked perfectly on my
|computer. So it's not the printer. His computer is a relatively new
|Dell 4500 running Windows XP Home, the same as my laptop. We
|uninstalled the IIIP from his Dell and reinstalled using the XP
|driver. Again, same as mine. As soon as you plug the parallel cable
|into the Dell the printer begins printing, with only garbage coming
|out. What could be wrong with the Dell parallel port that would cause
|this? Is there a way to test a parallel port?
|
|Dick

 

[Bob Headrick]

As soon as you plug the parallel cable
into the Dell the printer begins printing, with only garbage coming
out. What could be wrong with the Dell parallel port that would cause
this? Is there a way to test a parallel port?

In addition to checking the port settings in the BIOS as the other poster
recommended you should also check and make sure there are no partial jobs in
the print queue. A partially printed job would keep trying to print whenever
the printer was available, and would continue to print gibberish until the job
is finished. Delete any print jobs in the queue.

Regards,
Bob Headrick