"Jeff Liebermann" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 29 Nov 2013 06:59:27 -0800, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

Yesterday, the 4M started acting naughty. It first began printing
the source file (rather than creating a document).

Data loss. Check your connecting cable.

No offense, Jeff, but I've been servicing electronic equipment for 55+ years.
You're assuming I don't know the basics.

The cable is a USB cable. Windows 7 has USB support for printers. When I
bought this computer over a years ago, I bought a neat little adapter that
supports this protocol for parallel ports. It's been working nicely for over a
year.

I did, indeed, wonder whether the connection was bad. I checked at the
computer and printer. Everything was tight. I use a short USB cable to extend
the adapter's cable, which otherwise wouldn't be long enough. While monitoring
the printer under Devices & Printers, I brought the connection at this point,
and got an immediate "Printer Offline" response. This confirmed that the
computer and printer were communicating, on at least the control level.

"Just to prove a point..." I just turned on the printer and printed a page. It
worked. This strongly suggests -- but does not prove -- that the problem is
"fixed".


And I suspect the service shop would have had more trouble
finding the problem than I did.

It would have been working when you arrived at the repair shop.
It happens all the time.

"Claro", as the guy in the crazy-generous ad says.


I'm about to recycle all my HP LJ III and 4 parts because nobody
has wanted one repaired in about 3 years. Want a box of HP 4
maintenance parts and pieces? You pay shipping.

Please contact me directly, and let me know (in general -- you needn't go into
detail) what you have. I wouldn't mind a spare fuser assembly.


"We already know the answers -- we just haven't asked the right questions."
-- Edwin Land

Notice that he didn't say that we know the RIGHT answers.
Knowing the wrong answers does not help much.

You are quite missing the point. What Dr Land said is one of the most-profound
statements about the scientific process ever made.

We can come up with all sorts of answers -- but without the right questions,
we have no way of separating the right from the wrong, the useful from the
useless, etc. This is why the lunatic fringe of audiophilia gets into so much
trouble -- the assumption that it has the right answers, when it is actually
speculating.