A few months back I complained that my HP 4M had become a tar baby, just
sitting there, refusing to print any file sent to it. "Nothing was wrong", but
it wouldn't print. In desperation, I pulled the firmware memory card and
reseated it.

Bingo. It worked.

This just happened again. Again, "nothing was wrong" (that is, the diagnostics
showed no problems, and yanking the cable produced an instantaneous
"connection loss" message). And again, when I pulled and reseated the firmware
memory card -- that fixed it.

Curioser and curioser... Perhaps the contacts need a bit of ProGold?

William Sommerwerck wrote:
In desperation, I pulled the firmware memory card and reseated it.

Do you mean the SIMM that makes it speak PostScript, or the other
thing? (I think there's another thing. My 4M is a few miles away at
the moment.) That PostScript SIMM goes in the same row of sockets as
the regular RAM SIMMs.

And again, when I pulled and reseated the firmware memory card --
that fixed it.

I used to send PostScript to my 4M and let the printer interpret it.
With complex print jobs, this led to some *long* wait times before
the first page came out. I finally got the brain wave that, unlike
when the 4M was new, my PC now has about a zillion times more CPU than
the printer. So now I let the PC render the PostScript and just send
bitmaps to the printer; that works a lot better.

Under Windows, you should be able to do this by saying you have a
LaserJet 4, rather than a 4M. Pull the PostScript SIMM out of the
printer if you want to make really sure.

Curioser and curioser... Perhaps the contacts need a bit of ProGold?

Or there is some other solder joint on the board that gets flexed when
you cycle the firmware card.

Matt Roberds

wrote in message ...

William Sommerwerck wrote:
In desperation, I pulled the firmware memory card and reseated it.

Do you mean the SIMM that makes it speak PostScript, or the other
thing? (I think there's another thing. My 4M is a few miles away at
the moment.) hat PostScript SIMM goes in the same row of sockets as
the regular RAM SIMMs.

Exactly. The firmware and RAM apparently share the same memory space.


And again, when I pulled and reseated the firmware memory card --
that fixed it.

I used to send PostScript to my 4M and let the printer interpret it.
With complex print jobs, this led to some *long* wait times before
the first page came out. I finally got the brain wave that, unlike
when the 4M was new, my PC now has about a zillion times more
CPU [speed] than the printer. So now I let the PC render the PostScript
and just send bitmaps to the printer; that works a lot better.

There is a checkbox somewhere for "print as bitmap", but I can't find it. I
would prefer to let the printer handle. I only used this feature when I had to
print a 200-page document with graphics.


Curioser and curioser... Perhaps the contacts need a bit of ProGold?

Or there is some other solder joint on the board that gets flexed when
you cycle the firmware card.

I'll keep that in mind.