Cryptic enough for you?

Anyhow -- have an HP 5SI, locally connected through the parallel port. It has a serial MIO installed (don't know why).

Does anyone make a USB MIO? And would it be faster than the parallel port?

Thanks, as usual.

IIRC the 5SI uses the older formfactor MIO's. The newer MIO's have USB connectivity and unfortunately I dont believe they make an older MIO that has USB.

If you're looking to get some faster throughput to the 5SI beef up the memory, get a 400n MIO, and dump all your printjobs via network.

-JC

Yeah, I already bumped up the memory (it's so cheap nowadays) and added PostScript (which does slow everything down a bit).

I considered adding a network, but I thought I'd look at USB for openers, because it'd probably be cheaper and easier.

I think you're right on the form factor problem -- couldn'find anything on the HP website, either, but they usually only have the latest stuff, and this is an "ancient" printer. It sure does pump out good looking documents fast, though.

Believe it or not, they're selling the network MIO's on Ebay for between $15-45 - i remember when these used to go for $100's. Indeed, that is a workhorse printer that anyone doing heavy printing would take.

I hate to spill secrets, but ...

I picked it up last year at a garage sale! They wanted $35, I offered $30, and they took it. Weighed the cartridge, about 90% life left (and that's a 15,000 page cart, too!)

Cleaned the rollers (it has about 140K pages -- just broken in). Does all my two-sided and "B" size work.

I'm in the process of disposing of all the rest of my laser printers.

Jeez, You walked in a pile...

I hate bumping really old threads but ...

This post was regarding my HP 5Si:
Walked in a pile, eh?

Sunday I was browsing craigslist, and a guy was giving away a laser printer. So. Monday we went and picked it up. Glad I brought a dolly with me.

It's an HP 8000DN - think of my 5Si on steroids. By the way, the "D" stands for duplexer (included) and the "N" stands for networking (also included).

We wrestled it home and fired it up. It's built like a tank, and I know from whereof I speak regarding tanks. Everything works like a charm, including the built-in Postscript, PCL5e and PCL6. It also has a 1200 dpi mode that I haven't explored yet.

Original MSRP on these things ranged from $2500-3500.

I think I found another pile to wallow in.

Chances are my $100 Brother with duplex and network won't last as long as that HP.

Did you have to put it on it's own circuit breaker?

There's a 8000DN selling on ebay with a page count of 743,950; that's a pretty serious workhorse. I'd guess a beast like that would wear out long after supplies for it are no longer sold.

Out of curiosity, I did a little googling for reviews of this thing. It turns out there are many more than one user who report page counts well in excess of a million. One guy told of several units he had in his shop, all of which had counts of around three million.

HP finally got it right with this series - pity they've fallen off with many of their other printers. HP used to be the gold standard for laser printers. Not so much anymore.

ETA: Page count on my printer is about 150K. I'll be able to leave it in my will .

Buy a maint kit for that (still available from HP), and a couple of high capacity toners and your kid's kids could still be using it.

Sorry to bump an old thread (again!) but ...

I was perusing craigslist and I see someone giving away a color laser. I checked, and it was a company who seemed to be having problems ("might have a fuser issue") so ... come and get it.

So I did.

Turns out it's a Dell 3130cn. I checked it out, ran a test page, all looked good. So they helped me get it into my car and "Thank you. Bye"

It had a built in duplexer ($199 from Dell), the additional paper tray ($200 from Dell), and it turns out the toner carts are all full and high-capacity ($249 each from Dell).

Oh, the 'fuser' problem? Well, if you shake the toner cart the toner will distribute itself around nicely, and after a few pages it prints just fine.

Talk about a pile ...