Who knows what a printer is???

Factual Questions
1

Please teeming millions!!.. or teeming tens of thousands to be more accurate…

I bought a brand new HP Deskjet 820cxi professional series this weekend at a yard sale. It appears completely new. There is no dust, scratch marks, anything. It looks like it came right out of the box. Anyway, I was going around to a couple yard sales in the neighborhood I live in and found it. I bought the 35$ cartridge for it and I found the drivers for it in an HP archive. I downloaded it and I still can’t get the damn thing to work. What the hell am I doing wrong?

I usually don’t ask technical Q’s on this board, in fact I never ask them, but I am in a little bind and I was wondering if anyone could possibly help me trouble shoot.

I always get a window that says : ‘Computer unable to establish communication with printer’ … Thats about it. It is connected right and it has power. I am at a bit of an impass…Any help??

Thanks…

2

I had a similar error trying to network my PC’s…

Turns out the thing on the back labeled in big letters “COM1” is actually COM2…

3

How is it connected? LPT1 or USB? Is the appropriate port enabled in the system BIOS? Does it work with another PC? Have you tried swapping the cable with a known good cable?
Kat, there is a difference in serial and parallel ports in that seeing anything more than LPT1 on a PC is awfully damned rare while two COM ports is the norm. Serial printers are pretty much gone the way of the dodo and I’d be pretty surprised to find out that HP makes a serial interface for the 820CXi.

4

The 820 was an experiment of sorts by HP (and not altogether successful) and is a little bit of a different beast than many other Deskjets. It has relatively little “intelligence” onboard and relys almost completely on it’s driver set to do the image rendering via the computer’s CPU. It will not work under any flavor of NT period and is a 95/98 only printer.

With respect to the communication issue try setting your printer port mode (via the BIOS) to a non-ECP, standard bi-directional definition. YOu might want to double check the printer cable connection and make sure the cable is good and firmly seated at both ends.

5

This may be a stupid question, but do you have the printer turned on when you start or restart your computer? Our system will completely ignore the existence of our little HP if the printer is not turned on before the start up.

6

You might have a good cable, but it might be the wrong one. There are parallel port cables out there that don’t allow bidirectional communication. We have had some trouble with this kind of thing here at work with our HP printer.

7

Just a thought, but maybe you should ask the person who held the yard sale what “brand new” actually means. Maybe I’m just paranoid, but when I hear the words yard sale, I don’t exactly think of quality PC equipment… but like I said, just a thought…

8

Ditto what Mort Furd said. I pulled my hair out for days <shame>until I read the manual</shame> and it said I needed a bi-directional cable. With the new cable it worked on the first try.

9

I’d go with what Mort said. I have a relatively new inkjet printer (Lexmark, I believe) that won’t work with older parallel cables.

Either that or it’s a dead printer. Don’t believe everything you hear at yard sales.

10

WOW!! Thanks, I just went to the electronics store down the road and used a culmination of all of your advices. I bought a standard bi-directional cable and I set the printer port mode via the bios to non-ecp, standard bi-directional definition. (thanks astro) The printer is magnificent, it prints like a charm, both color and B/W. Granted the ink cartridges cost me 60$ USD but its a great printer all the same…Thanks again folks…