Do you get crashes when printing in Leopard (OS X 10.5)?

Posted in: Printers, blog by CW on 30 May 2010

If so, here’s one possible cause and solution from the excellent macosxhints.com website, posted by Tom Neale:

Several models of HP LaserJet printer are known to crash or hang when certain documents are printed from 10.5/Leopard machines. The culprit may be a bad or corrupted font, in particular, version 6 of the Papyrus font. In short: replace the font file with one from a 10.4 installation to stop the printer crashes.

The longer version: I have a Color Laserjet 3800n and also a 2430dtn that crash any time a document that uses the Papyrus font is printed from a machine running Mac OS 10.5.x. They display an Error 49.4 C02 code and the printer must be powered cycled to clear the problem. HP lists this code as ‘A critical firmware error has occurred;’ not particularly useful or informative. The same problem did not occur when printing from 10.4.x machines.

This all led me to look at the font itself. The file always passes the verification tests in Font Book; there is nothing overtly wrong with it. But, it clearly does not get along well with these HP Laserjet printers. The version of the font installed on a 10.5 system is is 6.0d6e1. It contains both Regular and Condensed versions of the font.

I went hunting for a different version of the Papyrus.dfont file and found one on a 10.4.11 machine. It is version 4.0d1e1 and contains only Regular, not Condensed. Replacing the newer font with the older one in the /Library/Fonts folder allowed me to successfully print documents using the Papyrus font. This has fixed the printer crashing problem for me.

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Memorial Day- store hours

Posted in: blog, store by CW on 28 May 2010

We will be open on Monday, May 31st, for at least 5 hours, 9AM to 2PM.

Most of our vendors will be closed Monday and quite a few of our customers have indicated they will be enjoying the 3-day weekend, so if it proves to be a slow sales day we’ll close at 2PM.

Should you need us to remain open longer or need a delivery on Monday after 2PM, please let us know before Noon on Monday.

We hope you and your loved ones enjoy the Memorial Day weekend. We’ll return to our regular store hours on Tuesday the 1st of June.

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HP 920 & 564 cartridges

Posted in: blog, inkjet by CW on 25 May 2010

We are now able to provide you with HP 920 and 564 replacement cartridges.

We cannot yet get the XL versions of these.

Our pricing is:

HP 920 black $12.99

HP 920 color $7.99 each

HP 564 black $8.99 (this is the slim black cartridge next to the colors in the image)

HP 564 color $7.99 each

Printing skin

Posted in: Technology, blog by CW on 11 May 2010

Technology is advancing so fast there doesn’t seem to be a day that goes by without a weird-but-true story making headlines.

Like this one; scientists using inkjet printers to print skin for wounded soldiers.

Researchers at Wake Forest University have found a way to use everyday ink-jet printers to quickly create skin for soldiers with life-threatening burns from the battlefield.

Scientists at the Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine have figured out how to use sterile ink-jet cartridges and printer heads to bioprint skin cells in three-dimensional patterns, building up the tissue in layers, said Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the institute said in an interview.

Using modified ink-jet printers has greatly accelerated the method of growing tissues, which in the past has been laboriously done by hand. Burns account for about one in 10 war wounds, so the demand for speed has driven research in skin grafting. The Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine funded the Wake Forest project.

The process basically works this way: Different types of skin cells are placed in wells of a sterilized ink cartridge. The printer is programmed to arrange the cells in a specific order, an innovative adaption of technology that allows scientists to precisely arrange multiple cell types and other tissue components into predetermined locations.

The institute has adapted another common piece of office equipment to replicate skin cells: a scanner that when placed on a patient, copies skin much like an office photocopier reproduces documents, Atala said.

To date, the institute only has tested the bioprinting in mice, and will require Food and Drug Administration approval before it can be used in humans, something that could take years, Atala said. (Source-nextgov.com)

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How men and women perceive color

Posted in: Humor, blog by CW on 5 May 2010

OK, this is a joke. Still, in a business like ours that deals extensively with colors and color names you’d be amazed at some of the suggestions we hear for the standard magenta, cyan and yellow (nearly everyone gets yellow right, but the other two get called all sorts of things).

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Phil McArtridge says: “Backups are important.”

Posted in: Productivity, blog by CW on 4 May 2010

Phil McArtridge, "Buy your backup cartridges at CW San Diego and save."

Ink-saving tips

Posted in: Tips & Tricks, blog by CW on 3 May 2010

Even though our customers are already saving money buy shopping at CW San Diego for their ink and toner needs, there’s always more we all could be doing to reduce our use of ink and toner. Every so often we like to share tips and tricks we come across that help us do that.

Makeuseof.com offers these suggestions:

Print only what you need. Don’t print a whole book, if you’re only interested in a few paragraphs. Don’t print the graphics, if you’re only interested in the text and vice versa.

If you’re printing a piece of text for proofreading, you may not need to print the pictures. In Word you can make use of the print option “draft output”, which prints a fast and low-quality draft copy without images. Go to >file >print. This will open the print menu. In the bottom left click >options and check >draft output. Then go ahead and select the printer. But make sure it’s fine tuned according to the tips listed below.

The right settings are essential and will save you the most when done right. Instead of manually choosing “low quality” settings for each print job (i.e. all the time), you should make “low quality” the default. Hence you’ll have to make “high quality” settings manually, which will make you choose them only when required (i.e. rarely).

First of all, take note of the layout options you have. You may be able to print several pages on a single piece of paper or you may be able to print on both sides of a paper. Both options can save a ton of ink/toner and even paper. Please remember that if you change settings here, every print job will be printed like this per default. So keep in mind the options you have here for those special cases.

On some printers you can reduce the graphic resolution. This option is usually found under >advanced settings. 300 dpi (dots per inch) are usually sufficient for most purposes. Besides, regular paper can’t handle very high resolutions anyways. So applying a high resolution only makes sense when you’re using high quality photo paper.

In general, inkjet printers require a steady stream of electricity. Now if you completely disconnect your inkjet printer from electricity, for example by using a power strip that can be switched off, the printer will go through a cleaning cycle once electricity is back. If repeated on a daily basis, this procedure not only costs energy, but also tons of ink.

To save energy, turn your printer on only when you need it! And to keep the ink from drying out, turn the printer off manually. Don’t use the power strip! Using the manual on/off button activates a program and the printer will properly “park” the ink cartridges. In the park position the ink is protected from drying out quickly. (Read all their tips at makeuseof.com)

5 Start Support offers a few less common, general purpose tips:

Ensure that the tape that seals the cartridge ink port is removed prior to installing the cartridge.

Use the printer’s own self-test, according to the manufacturer’s recommendation. If it fails, you have verified that the problem is within the printer. If the print head is not moving at all, the transport motor may have failed.

If the printer that you are using is not set as the default printer in Windows or the printer driver is not installed, the printer may print garbled characters. You may also receive errors when you attempt to print from applications.

If the printer passes the self-test, try a test print using the Print Screen capability within DOS. If the Print Screen fails, you know the problem is in the relationship between the printer and the computer. Inspect the cable and the cable connections. Replacing the cable with a known good cable is worth trying since cables are so frequently the source of printer problems. Cables can fail with broken wires, loose or broken pins, or incorrect pin-outs.

The message “out of paper” is sometimes erroneously reported when there is plenty of paper, and can indicate a physical problem with the printer.

If the printer port is not properly identified in CMOS, the printer may not function properly and you may receive errors when trying to print. Check your User’s Guide on how to enter CMOS. Once in the Setup utility, locate the LPT1 settings. The address setting for the LPT1 port should be 3BCh or 378h depending on what kind of video card you have. The IRQ setting for the port should be 7 and LPT1 should be enabled in order for the printer to print correctly. (More tips at 5starsupport.com)

That last tip is especially relevant if you are using a parallel-port cable to connect your printer to your computer. USB and Firewire connected printers should be recognized by the operating system without making you dig through your IRQ settings.

And that tip about removing the tape from the cartridge print head? We must get at least one call a week on that exact topic. It’s an easy mistake to make if you’re in a hurry or not used to installing cartridges.

Do you have any tips or tricks you’d like to pass along to our readers? Please include them in a comment to this article or email us at CW San Diego.

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