I bought a 25-year-old printer & regret EVERYTHING
I've made a huge mistake and ignored the first rule of vintage computing: NEVER buy an old inkjet printer, especially a 90s Canon. Yet here we are with a BJC-2000 color printer from 1999... in an ideal world this was gonna be a fun romp into Windows 95 Bubble Jet printing, plus a test of the IS-22 scanner cartridge. In reality though, everything about this thing sucks and is awful and that should surprise no one. Least of all me, but whatcha gonna do 🤷♂️
● LGR links:
/ @lgrbirds
/ lazygamereviews
/ lazygamereviews
/ lazygamereviews
● Download the archived Canon IS Scan floppy disks here:
archive.org/details/canon-is-...
● Background music is from Epidemic Sound:
www.epidemicsound.com/
00:00 questions
01:43 opinions
06:04 unboxing
08:59 setup
09:34 betrayal
13:08 denial
18:58 anger
25:49 suffering
28:38 acceptance
#lgr #computer #retro #printing #fail
Yes I used a different cable. Three of them, across the three different printers, all bidirectional. It did not make a difference. These printers are simply _pain._
But did you threaten it tho? In my experience 90’s printers almost exclusively work when under imminent threat to their life 😅
Yeah, you simply chose the worst printer in existence)) Cheap Canon inkjet printer - it’s a shoot in a foot (as well as every other stupid printer that uses stupid bubbleshit technology) I worked with so many inkjet printers, and canon is one of the worst, I learned this lesson early on, fortunately Basically there is only one proper reliable inkjet technology - piezoelectric (developed by epson, of course), everything else is shit
Used to sell these for a living, as well as the BJC-4000 and 4100s.. yeah...just don't.
@@michelcteixeirathey worked if you dedicate all time of your life to them Once in a while you should also bring a sacrifice, not much, 1-2 healthy children/month is often enough
@@icbrkr I commend you for sticking around. I'm sure selling those printers would be enough to end it all.
I’m 37 and we had this printer in the 90s. The first time my little brother heard my father say “Fuck” was directly because of this infernal device.
LMAO
LMFAO ^^
😂😂😂
🤣🤣🤣
lol, aw, bless
Fun Fact: I've been buying printers for 30 years, and I've regretted every single one of them.
Hah I've got a raven dot matrix downstairs and it works fine on my 286
They all suck ass!
Once I bought a laser printer 10 years ago, I’ve never looked back.. it’s still going good.😊
Only printer I didn't loath was a Samsung monochrome laser. Every Inkjet based printer deserves the Office Space treatment.
@@billybollockhead5628 I picked up a low page count LaserJet 4000 from a disposal pile, and I have a Dell color laser with a fairly low page count also. I only fire them up when I want to print a book or something. Otherwise I just use my Epson Eco tank, that is so cheap to print photos with.
I love that the chapter names for the video are called; Betrayal, denial, anger, suffering and finally, acceptance
Former Canon service tech here: The difference between a bubblejet & an inkjet is the method used to eject the drops of ink from the print head. Canon's patented technique is to use a tiny resistive heater to vapourise the ink, creating an expanding bubble that throws a drop of ink at the paper, whereas a regular ink jet uses a piezo-electric element to squeeze out a drop of ink at the paper. Because resistive elements can be made smaller than piezo elements, a bubblejet can do a resolution of 360 DPI, while a piezo inkjet can 'only' do 300 DPI resolution. You would think that bubblejet tech would be more reliable because the ejection system is simpler & has no moving parts, but at least in my years of experience, BJ printers were very prone to clogged jets.
Fascinating, thank you.
So I'm not the only printer service technician that watchs videos about 25 year old printers? 😂
no this is not true, both methods are called inkjet. In fact the largest producer of thermal inkjet was not Canon, but HP. The piezo inkjet was Epson tech. Advantage of piezo technology is the ability to eject droplets of any liquid with certain viscosity, while the thermal inkjet has to have the carrier being a H2O based. The advantage of thermal inkjet is simplicity and very low cost of production, while the piezo has long life (thermal head nozzle gets wider with every shot, until it cant hold the ink back) and ink versatility. Piezo inkjet heads were the first to achieve 720dpi (while the thermal inkjet was at 600dpi), today a piezo head is capable of 1.5 pl droplet achieving 2440dpi. Dont think that any consumer printer is using thermal inkjet today, but here I might be wrong since I dont follow small printers for more then a decade.
It's probably the same reason glue caps get all clogged up with crud. It's one of the rare cases where having that extra bit of tech was actually better.
HP also uses Thermo heads, I think they even predate Piezo heads, as did Lexmark back in the day,back when I cared about printers, only Epson did Piezo in the consumer maket, so I think there is at least some some level of Canon newspeak going on.
I was certified to work on Cannon Bubblejet printers back in the late 90s. The training video was a technician field stripping a printer then putting it back together. They were an absolute nightmare. Much more complicated than the HP Inkjet printers. The hilarious part was that at the end of the training video there are a few extra screws sitting on the bench. The tech picks them up, puts them in his pocket and says "Those are what we call Pocket Screws". The video ended at that. Mind you, this was the official Cannon supplied training video.
“Pocket screws” has now entered my permanent vocabulary
Do that enough times, and you can escape fights by throwing a handful of small screws at people's faces, exclaiming "pocket screws!"
Weight reduction because racecar.
@@ikrIkarus Dale Gribble would like to know your location
@@ikrIkarus and also block your washing machine pump
Man said "25 years" then "1999" and then I fell on the floor, sobbing in agony
Ikr sometimes it doesn't feel so nice being old
F
I still feel the 90s were less than 20 years ago.
It's basic math--it's 2024 and 2024-2000 = 24. And yet, my brain will NOT accept that Y2K, the second year of my college experience, was 24 years ago!
And also, the printer is GenZ
Seeing you whisper "I hate you so much" to your printer really sealed the deal of an authentic 90s printer experience. My mother making growling noises from her room when having to print stuff for my schoolwork in the late 90s suddenly makes a lot more sense..
Age has nothing to do with it. "I bought a printer [ . . . ] & regret EVERYTHING" is a valid statement in any era.
I almost always dreaded printing anything in the past. Then, out of need I bought the cheapest Brother B/W laser (HL-1210W) in 2016 and for some odd reason it has worked every single time since. Doesn't even need any driver software... I use it like a few times a year or so. The original 700 page cartridge sounds like it has still plenty of powder inside.
@@HulluJanneLaser is a different game. I love all my lasers.
I've yet to be burned by a laserjet printer; I'm pretty sure the one I have is a Brother as well, though newer model, I think (HL-L2325DW), works perfectly on the wireless network, can even print from my phone. Never had an issue with it after about two or three years of steady printing
What is wrong with us? We all watched this poor man fighting with an old printer. We've all been there. We all know how maddening this is. Yet here we are, watching someone else go through this for entertainment.
We really are a sick bunch.
Oh I pushed pause as soon as the video started. I couldn't bear the thought of witnessing this horror show again
Good documentation for future generations that will never know that kind of pain.
I fast-forwarded through parts of the video and then ended up quitting it. I can watch Civvie go through bad games all day, but printers - and especially old Inkjets - are their own kind of torture and I just can't.
i feel the pain, printers were very traumatizing , printers are my vietnam
This is genuinely the most accurate inkjet printer experience you could ask for.
Exactly. I bought my first computer in 1996 and this brings back so many memories of fighting brand new printers back in that era.
I remember our HP deskjet running into trouble all the time, and taking ages to print simple stuff when it did choose to work. I always thought my dad and I were doing something wrong or just cursed with bad luck... turns out the bad luck's been shared across an entire generation lol
this brings childhood memories. The aesthetics and the same level of frustration.
I had basically the same experience with an very recent inkjet printer. I trashed it ... did not want to bother with it anymore. Was a Brother though.
Yes! I’ve worked on so many of these back in the day. This was the exact experience!
"Never buy an old ink jet printer." Isn't that just a more specific version of the "never buy an inkjet printer" standard.
17:25 - I don't care what anyone says, this is an authenticate 90s home printer setup. It truly is. Great job! You perfectly captured the reason why movies like Office Space exist. Thanks.
haa!!
I’ve seen this man rebuild motherboards from the 80’s and bring them back to life. No man is a match for a 90’s era Inkjet printer.
Nor the modern inkjet for that matter.
I think Clint was on to something with his frustrated growl that he ought to send it back to Canon in a big bag of 💩 🤣🤣🤣
I mean, it's just chemistry, really... chemistry which has been lost for 20+ years. Hell of a lost medium.
As someone who lived through them the first time, non-networked, non-laser printers from the period are satanic.
I have an old Epson ink jet printer to fix. Jets have dried, and I partially disassembled the print head a few years ago. I have to soak it and try to put things together, with pocket screwes I can find, just to find it doesn't work anyway ;)
Every printer needs to have a "Yes, I installed the ink cartridges and paper correctly and there is no jam, your sensors are just wrong" button.
AND NO MY INKT IS NOT EMPTY BUTTON
Unfortunately there quite often is a "jam", it's just composed of a tiny bit of paper in the wrong spot.
@@jnharton I assume if it's that tiny it'll just get shunted out by the next paper you print (if it would _let_ you print). Either that or it won't be an issue at all and the printer will just print normally.
"Manual Override", otherwise known as the "feed" button. But that kinda ended with dot matrix when printer paper was a continuous perforated chain and easy to keep moving. When printers started having to grab individual sheets of paper it all went downhill.
@@scorpion07070 I thought the feed button just pushed the paper through without printing anything?
Hey Clint, I worked at the Canon call center in Chesapeake, VA back in the late 90s for a couple of years. Watching this video was a gleefully painful trip to the past. You dealt with so many issues that I walked people thru over the phone. Lots of memories were brought back of long boring shifts. Lots of knowledge that I was quite disappointed to realize I remember and yet my brain still allowed it happen. I really enjoyed this one, thanks a ton!
I have a 25-year-old HP Deskjet 710C. Still use it to print every now and then. Almost gave up on it when Windows 10 rolled around with no driver support for the old beast. Greatly insprired by you, got stubborn and installed Orache VM Virtual Machine, created a Windows XP machine on it and managed to get the printer running again. For a few years now it only prints in black and magenta, so it's not perfect, but I'm still proud of myself for prolonging its life. Thank you for all your videos, I'm around your age and had noone to share my love for computers with as a kid so it is nice to have that in a virtual way as a grown up. ❤
HP always had the drop on the others with the printheads being integral to the cartridge. The other brands were just a way of selling refills. Pity really, the Epson printers of this era were fairly well made, but the heads always gave up the ghost through lack of use. It was not too big of a deal to fit new print heads, the catch was that the heads alone cost much more than the printer did new.
I have an old DeskJet 820Cxi that looks like it could work. Inspired by your comment, I will try that. I will also need your yearly update here on the status of your 710C, thank you.
@@carlosfvs Can't sadly guarantee an update with my scattered brain, but I'll try to keep it in mind. 😀It will be interesting to see if further colors stop functioning over time. I've been wondering if it's due to losing electrical contact. If black color stops working, I'll propably take a closer look inside. For now it can keep on printing. Hope you can get yours working or at least have more fun with the project than LGR did with the Canons!
I've had an HP Deskjet 600, and after that an HP Deskjet 5550. After that I promised myself I would never buy an HP product anymore, neither an inkjet printer!
@@mmaldonadojr I've had bad experiences with Epson products. It seems no option is safe when it comes to printers.
You actually had a authentic 90's printer experience. We all swore like sailors, banged our heads, yelled, and screamed out loud. Thank you for bringing out my printer PTSD
Neighbours sometimes looked up strangely when we 'tiled' a printer..... open the window, check if no-one is below it in the parkinglot (3 floors) and it makes such a nice sound when it hits the ground! One time it actually worked after that....
They haven't gotten any better. HP's enterprise printers are supposed to have an agent that reports toner levels to a central server for automatic reordering and meter reads, but it doesn't work when the printer is connected over USB (it's supposed to, but it's broken. We spent over a year with HP and the MSP that provides the printers and were unable to solve it. Some models are worse than others), so each printer in our branch offices needs to be connected both over USB and to the network just to report the toner levels. Also, the "universal" driver they claim to have isn't. Straight up.
That’s still exactly how it is today, at least with HP (Horrible Products)
@@charlie_nolan My company buys HP because they're cheaper, and I spend more time fixing the printers at the lab I work in than actual lab work.
I still have (and use) my HP Laserjet 1020. At 19 years old it is the oldest piece of tech that I still use regularly. It is loud, and slow, but it does just fine for printing text. The toner cartridges are cheap and last for years. My toddler knocked it off the desk a couple years back and cracked the case but it still works. I think I will make sure I'm buried with it.
When I worked I.T. as a student at college in 2006, there was an older guy there (who was full time staff) who was a printer WIZARD. He was able to pull them apart, replace individual gears and springs, and get everything moving again. Never had any issues getting them setup on a machine, either. He saved the college tons of money every year by being able to do repairs that manufacturers or other shops wouldn't or couldn't do. Miss ya, Gary.
Gary ❤
If you ever find a Gary for any particular appliance, hold on to them. Give them cookies, beer, whatever to stay on their good side. ❤
Back in 06 I started doing IT for an office of roughly 1400 people. We maintained our own Lazer printers (probably had well over 100 between personal Laser printers at executives desks, and HP 5si network printers at the end of cubicle rows. We had a "Gary" and I used to LOVE working on the printers. It only lasted until about 2009 when we got a contract with Ricoh and they took away all local printers and replaced them with far fewer MFD's.
@@Qmeister044 Gary never asked for much. Just a place to roll his cigs and an ear to vent to every once in a while!
I’ve did it before but it’s a pain in the ass.
The fact that NIB machines don't work and all that has happened is time has passed, convinces me these heaps were designed to crap out after a year or two. Modern inkjets really aren't much better. The best thing I've found is to print one page a week to keep the ink moving. If you let it sit and don't use it, it's going to be a battle to get it working again, every time.
I actually have had good luck with the two printer/scanners (Brother) I purchased since around 2010. Hope I haven't jinxed myself. Back in the day, yup they lasted 2 years if I was lucky.
Just go laser. You lose color printing but _It just works_
@@moardargons8160 Color laser printers are a thing.
@@moardargons8160 or you get lucky and score a color laser / scanner from 2015 for next to nothing on ebay (thanks Farm office that had no idea what they were selling, and in return I got a nice samsung color laser for like 50 bucks, with the only downside being any dedicated software having some hp-ness due to them buying out samsung's print division, but you can pretty much forgo that and just use the driver windows installs (or the samsung print service for android, but that seems to have only been mildly hp branded)
Injets can be good, but they're not the cheap ones in a Walmart.. they're the photo printers behind the counter using 8 to 12 different ink cartridges..
This is one thing where nostalgia is never rose colored: installing via all those disketettes, cost of ink, needing to buy adapters and needed wires. No wifi printing from the phone. Many times, nostalgia is overrated.
Jade coloured glasses?
Bubblejets were literally the worst, bubbles are supposed to be fun and this WASN’T
Just doing mild research on them, I don't understand why they're still around or rather why the technique is practiced. Because that's what Bubble Jet is, it's just Inket but practiced differently by vaporizing the ink and having it just drop like bubbles onto paper. But it's slower, it's inefficient and it is only just another way. A way that sucks.
@@frozyre7854 I'm pretty sure it was just a way of working around one of HP's patents. But yeah, buying one of these instead of a DeskJet was generally a mistake. The HP were more expensive up front, and the ink cartridges cost about the same, but you'd not be replacing the printer every 6 months.
Canon bubble-jet was a mistake, and I don’t know why they stuck with it! And the printers were FLIMSY electronically, with flaky boards that cooked themselves far faster than any other printer brand with PERHAPS the exception of the Lexmark-made IBM bubble-jets. And yet I still stand by Canon as my preferred DSLR brand!
@Eireman_on_Twitch The different departments of a large tech company can differ wildly in quality. For example, I buy just about nothing from Sony anymore, other than their bluetooth headphones.
@@h8GW You have a point there. It's like with Samsung. People buy Samsung Phones, Samsung TVs, Samsung Tablets. But I don't think anyone sees them as a primary refridgerator provider. There's just other brands. Just because you develop a variety of products and ranges, doesn't always mean they're as good as what you're known for providing.
I love that the largest video sections are entitled "betrayal", "denial", "anger" and "suffering"
What's missing is the fifth stage.
@@james66666 isnt the last step acceptance?
THAT is a absolute, perfect 90s PC experience. This how we learned to troubleshoot und to fight and to not give up until the thingy was working.
i've never heard clint have to "beep" himself before.. positively tickling
This piece of garbage wasn't good even 25 years ago, imagine today...
We don't have to imagine today. Clint did a video on it...the one you commented on. ;)
My thoughts and words exactly. *in a creaky voice: “I remember how this old junk was a new junk when I was already done with school”*.
Can confirm. We had a very similar model back in The Day and it was 💩
@@lastcontinue3010 Yes it was!! Totally.
So true!
I look forward to watching the LGR Birds livestream one day and seeing Clint re-enacting the printer scene from "Office Space" in the background.
At least as a patreon video.. I'd subscribe to see that
Quite surprising to see you here!
I thought you meant “blurbs” at first and now I see how wrong I am.
@@Skradgee LGR Berbs. =P
This was the ending I expected as well😂
Ah nice, a Printer Simulator video experience! Now I can sit back, relax while I feel my heartrate rise, my logical thinking going out the window all the while my body is starting to shiver and tears run down my face. Thanks LGR!
For lazerprinters from the 90's I'd look for a HP Laserjet 5 - Peak lazerprinters that usually only die because the brass cogs wear out (seriously. I worked in a company that shipped PC parts and we had a few of them in a dusty warehouse around 2010 that had printed over 2 million pages and only got replaced because parts where getting really hard to find).
I'm pretty sure my dad had one of those in the home office. We only replaced it after I tried 3 different parallel adapters when his new computer didn't come with that port, and all of them failed driver install one way or another.
Yep, someone broke the cartridge slot and boxed it back up. We had customers do that alot on that model.
That black plastic piece at 11:25(ish) is definitely broken. The plastic retaining clips are missing from the center split post.
Clint got scooped !
@@cskinner89 this. its pretty evident honestly, the plastic is sheared.
That's the reason why it sat in the box. The customer got their money back, bought another one, saved that one for parts, then 20 years of time passed and it got put on eBay as new. That ink cartridge container was never tied up in a grocery store produce bag like that.
I worked at Best Buy when these were a major seller. I remember them in particular because they were what we called "Devo Yes" meaning when they'd come in for repair, we'd hand the customer a brand new one in box, mark down the return, and throw the broke printer in the garbage. Apparently cheaper for the manufacturer as trash than to ship and/or repair it. I remember the BJ2000 specifically due to the volume that we threw away. I'd say at least multiple units (1-5) per WEEK.
Hi LGR, large format printer technician here, I highly doubt that thing has a piezo electric head, but when an epson piezo head gets clogged up like this due to lack of maintenance and idling for weeks on end, we can often break the gunk up with a head soak. That being letting the print head rest on a lint free wipe that has been saturated with the recommended cleaning solution for the ink type and hardware for an hour or so to an overnight or over the weekend. Most desktop inkjets run an aqueous ink, so if you cannot find a recommended cleaning solution for this golden age artifact, a mixture of 1 part 70% iso and 2 parts distilled water should do the trick fine. The worst that could happen is that you, STILL have a non functional print head. Since it started firing a few nozzles at the end, we can almost rule out a head cable, CR board, or brain box issue. What may have happened is that ink being past it's life time. My experience is much the same, but also different since the printers I work on primarily use a solvent based ink. What happens over time is that the pigment starts to separate from the ink base. In printers that are fed by backpressure from their ink lines, this leads to the ink base flowing out, and leaving pigments behind in the cartridge. In printers that are gravity fed like the 64" and better Mutoh machines I work on from time to time, and like yours appears to be, we see the opposite problem where we are getting a higher ratio of pigment to the ink, leading to chowdered dampers and clogged nozzles. Most solvent inks start to dangerously separate after a year or so, which is why some manufacturers build a expiration date cutoff into the firmware of the machine. Assuming your machine is running an aqueous ink giving the cartridges a REAL GOOD shake should do the trick, then again they are a couple decades past their likely expiry so it may not. Cheers!
Look forward to the "I smashed all the 90's printer with a baseball bat video"
Out source it to AVN.
A classic
“Damn it feels good to be a gangster”
I used to work for an office supply company that sold TONS of HP product. A representative for the company came to give us a lecture on new product. When we grilled the rep on why their products were shoddy, why the ink costs so much, why they make it so difficult to find the product number for the cartridges, even asked them why they manufacture ink to fail...the ultimate response in the end was , "Look! I'm here to help you sell MORE HP product, not address problems with production!" All of these machines are GARBAGE! And i live for the day there's real crowd funding for an actually working computer printer with metal gears and parts!
YES! What we need are open source/libre paper printers. The insane thing is that we already have open source/libre 3D printers!
all of those cheap sub $80 ink printers in stores nowadays? ALL REQUIRE PROPRIETARY INKK AHHHHH
Brother printers works, I've worked with repairing them, they are built better
I used an original HP DeskJet 500 in the mid 90s. No complaints with it; got through 3 or 4 cartridges (all refills) before switching to some HP LaserJet. I agree that the cheap printers were and are crap, but to call them all bad is nonsense.
@@DCLXV2 Agreed, I like how their carts are cheaper and also transparent allowing you to see how much is left in there!
This is a gem of a video, captured something we've all gone through at one point. Thank you for sharing!
I remember those times. I was working as a service agent, Canon printers were the worst, they only had problems. HP were strong, they had robust models with minor problems, and the cartridges were infinitely refillable. Good luck man, I appreciate what you are doing!!!
1999: A problem occurred. 2024: Something went wrong. How the heck are we still having the exact same problems twenty-five years later?
That is how capitalism works
@@shikoist Chernobyl?
@@shikoistyou'll probably get some eye rolls, but honestly you aren't wrong. The problem is about alignment of incentives, and capitalism ensures incentives remain aligned to profit above all else. Quality/user-experience/et al are only relevant insofar as they directly and obviously drive profit.
@@shikoist you type this on your phone or laptop, over the internet, while watching a KZhead video, all courtesy of capitalism. People brought these things to market in order to make money. Like it, hate it, doesn't matter one way or the other what we think. Our lives are still ruled by capitalism. Only other option is to go "off grid" and become a hermit, living off the land. Otherwise, we consume together.
@@nexussaysDidn't HP do some thing recently where you have to subscribe monthly to use the printer you own or something stupid along those lines? I always hear nightmares about all the crap printer companies pull these days.
In the last decade of watching LGR, I have not heard Clint use foul language until now. This printer must be the mother of all junk technology. And I thought HP was bad!
I was a patron of his on patreon until I backed out due to financial reasons, but he regularly swears over there. Just not here because of KZhead guidelines.
Most of the time it's not the company (Brother, Canon, HP, Dell, etc) per se so much as particular models/model lines that were unusually awful
Yeah, the foul Language felt more occasional (On YT, at least) than nowadays... But I cannot blame him, If you got something that doesn't work (Or it works, but there's so many caveats to deal with.) and just pisses you off then yeah...
That sound you made in response to the smell of the cartridge was gold. 7:53
What did we learn children? That Canon printers have not changed. This is perhaps my favorite of all your videos.
Why's the vintage scene harshing on old inkjets? This is the most authentic 90's computer experience I've ever seen on youtube.
It's not the part of the 90's computer experience that we really want to remember. "Memories" like this are up there with busy signals from your dial-up ISP, and trying to call them up for tech support.
Agreed, we had low budget stuff and couldn't afford to buy all fancy new stuff so you just struggled on and made it work. I remember the first laptop I ever bought. I ripped the power connector off the board and didn't have any money to fix it so I cut a piece of trellis wire and globbed solder on til it connected. Keyboard died? Just added an external keyboard. Still got that laptop, it's missing so many screws but it still works.
PCs were pretty boring through the 1990s. Except DOOM of course! OK PCs post-1994 or so, pretty dull.
@@Ultimatebubs I think worse than busy signals was actually getting "help"? These calls were timed by the minute for expense, so if your problem might, just possibly, take longer than re-installing Office or re-installing Windows... well, they'd give you directions for re-installing Office and/or Windows and that was about all the help you'd get. By the time the call (or callS) ended, you were prepared to never call for help ever again. You might think I'm kidding, but I graduated from "Boston College Computer Center" with a "Help Desk Certificate" in 1999 and that's about all we were taught, installing and re-installing Office and Windows!
@@greenaum > Except DOOM of course! And Descent.
If anyone wonders what printing was like in the late 90's, just show them this video. Such a genuine experience. With the small exeption that back then you could take it back to the store.
Can confirm, this video isn't really about vintage tech. That really was the crappy inkjet experience in its own time.
I so don’t regret not owning an inkjet ever… first we had a Star LC24-10 pinwriter, then an old LJ3, after that a Kyocera FS-1000. All those were really reliable.
@@root42100%, when I was a kid sometimes I would be jealous of the other kids that could print their papers and assignments in color. As I grew up and learned how much less fuss our family's B&W laser printers were compared to inkjets, that jealousy turned into smugness instead. 😂
I remember that in the past 30 years in my house we had HP, Canon and Lexmark printers; but the Canon printer was the only one we returned to the store... and it was "free" bonus in a PC bundle.
This is the funniest video you have ever made 😂😂 I couldn’t stop laughing when the pages kept coming out blank, you captured the unique frustration of dealing with printers of the 90s lol😂🎉
"of the 90s"? Oh, right, NOW you have the same damned thing except you had to subscribe to ink cartridges first. BSaaS!
Only from LGR would I lie in my bed, drowsy from sleep medication, and watch 30 minutes of a man mostly struggling with a damn printer. 😂 We appreciate it, Clint.
Gonna embrace my inner Canon and be an absolute bitch to deal with
okay this gave me a good laugh 😄
extremely underrated comment LMAO
That's one way to get alimony.
Not all Canons are like that my MG 2120 is very nice to me. the only time it's a pain is when I get a new computer
“What do people and printers from the 90’s-early 00’s have in common? They don’t want to work!”- people who own houses
"i wanted 90s printer experience" I think it's quite accurate. You got it.
I had one of these; what a fantastic reminder of the era! Loved the lever install feel and sound and the cartridge containers with their film covers. The printer used to get hot and you could smell the ink, the paper and the plastic. The top buttons were fantastic to use.
I love how Clint started this video so bright and hopeful, expecting to be about to take a stroll through memory lane with a childhood printer but came out on the other side with what almost felt like a failed video project. But the thing is that this was incredible to watch because of the constant disappointments. I appreciate that you allowed us to experience your infuriation with the printer. Not every video should be a positive outcome with technology. Thank you, Clint.
As someone who works in IT, if it involves a printer, it's *always* going to be a nightmare. "Wake up, Mr. Freeman. Wake up and smell the bubble jets."
“The right man supporting the wrong ticket can make all the difference in the world.”
Unforseen Consequences!
@@excrono "They're waiting for you, Gordon... In the Tech Support Department."
I like how there's smooth jazz playing in the background while he's slowly losing his mind.
Just like that one test chamber in Portal 2.
Mind-destroyingly smooth jazz.
It's his style
I laughed at that "Y2K OK!" sticker on the box, what a silly thing in retrospective. Also a nice job on translating the unboxing at 7:01: [bubble wrap unwrapping all bubbly-like], sums it up pretty good.
Try a HP deskJet 660C I have an old one and it uses standard HP 49 ink with no weird holder assembly, it prints directly from the cartridge with no weird nozzle in between it and the paper like yours has. It’s a serial port printer and It’s a beautiful old beast. Mine was made in November of 95 and is an “SE” edition but it seems identical to the regular 600C other than using a SCSI cabe to interface with the printer for some reason.
“I feel like I’m taking the plutonium out of the DeLorean.” Thank you for that one. 😂
My two most frustrating things of the 90's - Getting a printer to print - Installing a modem driver
You must have had one of those winmodems which have been known for sucking. Using the external modems via serial port are much easier to install and use. Can't go wrong with USRobotics.
i just realized i never had to. my first computer was an ibm clone in 96 that a family friend used to build and sell with modem option which we didn't get initially but he ended up installing a few months later when we finally got isp access locally, a 56k us robotics. my second pc was k62 acer aspire which included it and it was on this that i finally installed my firs internal components, a cd-rw ide burner and audio blaster
Never had a problem with a single modem I used, and I went from 2400baud to 56kflex. Printers? Absolute crap, every single one. Only printer I ever had that wasn't junk is a Dell Laser MFP 1815DN. And yes, you heard correctly - IS, as in I still use it. I got it secondhand from a friend after helping him clean out his grandmother's house in 2010, and she had already had it for a few years. I'm almost certain it's still got the same toner cartridge in it. Only problem is that the mechanics are starting to fail, but when it runs, it still prints perfectly. Lots of weird phantom paper jams and sadly, the feeding mechanism for copying/scanning batches doesn't work as one of the rubber belts disintegrated. By comparison, every inkjet or bubblejet printer I owned failed after a year or two and the ink cartridges never got the advertised number of pages. Terrible line of printers, all printed terribly too.
add the dreaded WINMODEM - after 3 hours desparately trying to get online, I lost it - Pulled the thing out and flung it down the garden!
Actually I can one up that...Print sharing. I did light IT tech work in the 90's lots of cabling as well, and print sharing was the absolutely worst biggest most failure prone POS of the entire experience, because not only did you have to deal with these monstrosity printers, but you also had to make them do things they refuse to do.
"...I just wont 90's printer expirience..." that exacly how i remember printers in 90's 😂
7:00 that is one unfortunate serial number. I've had customers call and complain about how we are harassing them over things like that. Finally got rid of them by giving them the number for the manufacturer.
Wasn't this the 90s? I'd think they'd have supported that kind of stuff.
oh god, I didn't even notice that
2 Things: 1. There was a comedienne back in the early 00s that had a nice bit about printers. "People keep telling me I should have kids. What do I need kids for? I've got a printer!" "Print." "No." "Print!" "No!" "PRINT!!!" "NO!!!" 2. You should see if you can find an HP DeskJet 720C. My family had one, and it still worked when we finally tossed it just a few years ago. Thing was built like a tank and worked for 20 years. I think the cartridges in it at the end were at least 10 years old, but somehow still printed just fine. That thing was a beast and I kinda wish we'd kept it.
My parents had one and it kicked the bucket somewhere after 4-5 years of use. Refused to print for some reason or the printing was messed up, can't remember clearly why but it ended up puking ink onto our floor.
As much as we love old tech, we also love watching people suffer from said old tech not working as it should.
And not having to support them to resolve it.
This piece of crap is working *exactly* as it should 😆
I worked for a CAD software company. The lady secretary (had little in-depth technical computer knowledge but was very competent none-the-less) had a little inkjet printer on her desk for doing simple one-off pages and envelope labels, save her messing with the big main office complicated thing. The night before her birthday, when she'd turned off her computer and gone home, we sent a message to her printer, which obviously got put in the print queue. Next morning, she sits down at her desk, switches her computer on, and after it booted up, immediately spat out "Happy Birthday, Sandra". Obviously, we all denied any knowledge, "must be magic Sandra".
Your best bet for a color printer that works with vintage PCs is probably the dot-matrix. Early color lasers were not only enormous, but extremely complex, with a large number of bespoke consumables that had to be replaced. The early HP Color LaserJets, for example, in addition to toner and drum, had a toner collection box, coating kit, black developer, and color developer, which all had to be replaced at various intervals. I feel like being able to find all those components today and whether they would still be good would be impossible, and that's on top of the mechanical stuff still working and being in alignment and such.
a WHOLE 1999 experience out of the box..
Yeah and a reason why some things are just better left in the past.
Well, some ppl thought the world was gonna end then, so why bother making better printers? Haha
I worked at Office Depot in 1999 and I can tell you that your video is a success. You have recreated the late-90s inkjet experience! We got more returns on Canon inkjet printers than any other brand for the same reasons that you are experiencing now. In fact, Canon inkjet printers took up more space in our 'returns cage' than any other item, short of Emachines computers. They were number one, but Canon inkjet printers was easily number two.
Funny, our e-machine never died. And the sticker on the front advertised a clock speed that was not only 25% or so *lower* than the CPU actually installed, but didn't even *exist* for the series of CPU in question. (Paid for 766 MHz, got an even GHz). Quite at odds with both e-machine's reputation and what you'd expect from the garish stickers on the front.
@@JonBrase I personally never had a problem with Emachines. On the contrary, I thought they were the best deal in PCs at the time. I sold a crap-ton of em. They were brought back, I think, because people would send off for the rebates then return the computer. Easy money.
I had the exact same one in 2001! It came free with our indigo blue G3 iMac. I felt bad for tearing it down, thanks for preserving this... engaging experience
as someone who worked for years in a tech support call center for Gateway around the time these things were bundled with most home computer purchases (along with Windows ME!), this video gave me a special kind of dread. thank you for unlocking painful memories. and my condolences.
This is the real video. What being a retro tech youtuber is really like. Not the glamor of what the edited good videos usually are. This one is usually deleted and never seeing the light of day. I applaud you letting us see the frustration of realistically working with retro tech.
Yes. I felt like Adrian Black opened the floodgates when he left that kind of stuff in his videos.
@@rommix0 I didn't know who Adrian Black is but I just subbed. will watch later.
@@ThatMatt85 Yeah his stuff is good. From fixing Commodore 64s to other stuff like programming diagnostic ROMs.
wow... so many pristine examples of 90's printers performing exactly as they did out of the box in the 90's. that's craftsmanship.
One of the reasons I really enjoy Clint's videos is because he doesn't shy away from showing failure or major problems during his setup videos. As someone who also enjoys tinkering with old PC's and tech it can be very frustrating to run into a problem and struggle for hours to negotiate or fix said problem, but I never find it discouraging or give up because LGR's videos often show that I'm not alone in that frustration or just unskilled or inept with old tech, they can simply be a pain in the ass a lot of the time but that's part of their charm.
Used to work for a Canon service center. I repaired a LOT of these under warranty. 5-10 if them a day. I had cases of the carriage units in stock. They actually had an updated part that would not break. The print head part soak it in hot water for about 10 minutes and it will normally start flowing again. We also had problem with after market ink tanks leaking and the after market ink back then was acidic and would eat the copper pads off of carriage where the cartridge seated and made contact (that was way more common on the 600, 610, 620 and 6000 series though). The BJ-200 was the best printer ever. I hardly ever had to work on them and the Ink tanks lasted forever. They were Black and while. The BJC-210's were nice too, they just had a Black and White tank like the 200 and had a color one that you put in to print color. I threw out all of my old parts I had in storage about 7 years ago for all these printers. The scanner issue in normally that your parallel port or cable is not bi-directional. Also Make sure Windows the port type is set to ECP. I would try a different parallel port if you still have issues. Make sure none of you other cards are using IRQ 7 for LPT1 and you are using base address of 378 for LPT1
BJC-620 was my first printer
I had this exact model of printer back in the 90s. In my experience, it had two operating modes: 1, it would grab multiple sheets at random, cruch them up, and block the printer, requiring a time-consuming process to untangle everything; or 2, it would grab a sheet, spit some random bits of ink on it, shake my desk violently as the printer head moved back and forth, and spit the paper out across the room. And always when you had to print a paper for school the next day.
I had one and it taught me that printers could absolutely smell deadlines. And I’d forgotten about our whole computer desk rocking back and forth. How a flat piece of paper could come out accordianed AND with a hole in it was a mystery.
This should be the dictionary entry to describe printers in general 😅
did you ever consider offering it a blood sacrifice or calling an exorcist?
I had one that was like that too. You were lucky if it didn’t grab a dozen pages at once and print half on one and half on another.
Yeah I remember certain HP printers of the day would do this thing where they just spit out page after page of symbols and gibberish until you turned it off or it ran out of paper.
7:59 - LGR's love for smelling old stuff backfires for the first time hahaha
Yes indeed LMAO! Clint, you're a glutton for punishment...that shitty smell should've been a sign to stop.right.there 🛑🤣💩
Forbidden perfume.
I laughed a lot with your frustration. There's not a single thing funnier than seeing a not working infernal device like this (when it happens to other one)
As someone who is poor, I feel your pain. Especially with the error messages that don’t tell you what the errors are. And that you’re supposed to just contact a service center that doesn’t exist anymore (or never existed in the first place in my country) and that you’re just supposed to buy a new one. Which also is built just the same way, not meant to last more than a year or two. Planned obsolescence.
I owned a computershop in the 90s. Canon BubbleJets were the worst. Also Epson Styles printers had clogging issues. I always tried changing customers’ minds when they came in and asked for a Canon or Epson. If these things clogged or broke, I had to deal with the RMA issues (and that happened a lot!). Just get yourself an HP Deskjet 600, 895 or any other model from that era. Cartridges are still available and no clogging issues because you replace the printhead with each change of cartridge.
I used to buy off brand ink from the internet to refill the cartridges. It was good quality at a low price.
Got an older OfficeJet that uses the HP21XL, only way thats changing is if i get a feeder system XD
Had a HP Deskjet 720C back in the day, never had a problem, sadly ended in the garbage one day thx to my mom.
Came here to say this exact thing. This video brought up some bad memories. I also remember an inkjet printer, I think it was a epson, with an ink discharge tube for priming the cartridge that traversed across the width of the printer so that a wheel on the carriage could push ink though it. It would always get clogged with dried ink.
This is the one. Any of those Deskjets should suit your needs.
Back in the late 90s we followed what is still the best printer advice and bought a Brother mono laser. It was perfection. The only reason we replaced it was that a new Brother mono laser was cheaper than a new toner and drum for the old one.
I just had to repair my 21 year old HP Laserjet 1010 for the first time. A little solenoid inside was sticking so it picked up two sheets. At the time I bought it a new cartridge was more than I paid for the printer so I bought a refill kit. Third party cartridges are now so cheap I just buy those. Possibly my best computing purchase.
I've been passed over for multiple well paying tech support jobs simply because I do not and will not fuck with printers lmao And I think that rule needs to be updated to a general "Never buy a printer ever" cause they're all a nightmare.
That office space movie segment becomes more and more significant. Thank you for recording the struggle 🎉
5:48 Seeing a 24-year-old review of anything on Amazon feels kind of like a time capsule in itself!
True. Anything older than 5 years old is easily in a time capsule of its own. Just like old social media posts during the height of Covid.
I remember that stupid BJC-4300 that dried within a week of not using it and wasted a fifth of the super expensive colors with each self cleaning cycle and it still made stripes. This video is the most accurate late 90s experience you could have asked for. Back then I only didn't know that I wasn't the only one suffering... but obviously the whole world did. Thank you for bringing peace to this part of my memories.
Mine was a BJC-4200, but I suffered exactly the same. I hated that thing so much. We spent *so much* money on ink for partially-printed pages and test patterns and... *sigh*
@@drewstemen9597 Had the same POS. Everytime I needed to pprint anything, the ink had dried out. It was so damn slow.
This was a throw back but also solved something I've been trying to figure out for years., I had one of these in the 90s, been trying to rebuild the 90's home setup and have been trying to work out what was missing...
I had some kind of HP DeskJet printer back in the 90's. Can't remember the model, but it was inkjet, but it also had a heating element that use to dry the ink on the way through to stop it smudging. It was an absolutely brilliant printer, but was only monochrome. Absolutely loved that printer.
I HAD THIS THING BACK THEN IT SUCKED EVEN THEN. I saw the photo of the box and hours and hours of fighting this thing when a paper was due flooded back into my mind...
Completely dysfunctional but hey, they were 100% Y2K OK! 😆
Ink jet printers took many of us through the 5 stages of grief over the years, thanks for documenting this journey.
The only thing it needs to be any more perfect, its a montage at the end, to the beats of Geto Boys.
These printers are gems no doubt. I own the BJC 4200, I purchased it back in 1995ish but I loved the sound it makes when opening up the front to access the ink cartridges, and to think they were making bubblejets back then.
Didn't notice the chapter titles before now. Pure genius!
in 1999 my dad came back home with one of these thinking he wouldn't have to give me more "print at stationary store" money. From then on he had to give me "fix the printer" money. fuck you canon
Yells "I shouldn't have smelled that"... My new catch phrase. Best 😂
Probably has toluene in it and could legitimately get high from it.
So talking one grognard to another, back in the day we used to keep on hand some really fine syringes to use with cleaning up machines like this. The isopropyl can only work so well by itself, it either needs massive time or considerable force when dealing with truly stuck dry-out. I'd expect, at least with the black, you also may have a clog in the head or arm itself instead of just in the carriage. The scanner issue seemed to either be a result of 1: your machine having communication issues meaning a card or port was suffering, most likely from inconsistent power delivery or 2: the scan module itself may have a contact pad that contacts and communicates inside the printer, meaning there's an inconsistent link in that chain somewhere. In regards to the laser printers, honestly there were no home-dedicated color lasers outside of apple until the mid/late 90's, so I'm not even sure what to recommend here. Buying some old and giant business class machine like a Ricoh or Xerox seems insane, but Toner holds up much better over long periods of no or little use, and ANY inkjet you get is going to have the same issues these ones did
I know these videos probably frustrate you but man its funny hearing your comments and frustrations. Reminds me soooo much of dealing with many tech purchases in the 90s.
Clint accidentally huffing off gassed bubble jet ink was the highlight of this video.
I remember there was a time in the 2000s that it was basically the same price to buy a new printer with ink cartridge rather than buy a replacement ink cartridge
Still true today
I'll surprise you, it's still current in few situations. It's better just to stay away from cheap (HP) ink printers or ink printers at all, depending what do you expect from printer.
They figure it out and started to put less ink in the starters or even put in a chip with lower counter
@@yoghurrt1 Ah man, to live in a time when HP stuff is called cheap and unreliable! Bill and Dave are turning in their graves. I can only imagine HP licensed their good name to some horrible Chinese company. Whatever they got for it, it wasn't worth it. HP used to be known for top-end instrumentation, machines nobody else would ever even imagine, never mind manufacture. Volt meters with 8 digits after the decimal point! Labs were full of HP stuff, it was well-engineered and made to last. The HP name was priceless, not so long ago. Now they either make, or license, terrible printers, though all consumer-grade printers are terrible.
I remember that !
Seeing one of those ink cartridge holders again is truly nuts indeed. I distinctly remember there being a smiley face on the locking tab
I've always hated inkjet printers. Sitting unused for a few months means replacing cartridges which would cost as much as a new printer. I switched to a laser printer about 10 years ago and never looked back.
I gave up on having a printer decades ago. With the ink nonsense & the other ways they try to "monetize" you nowadays its just not worth it to own a printer. If i need a hard copy of something i put it on a thumb drive & go to the library & use their printers. Who wouldve thought that the best argument for the "paperless office" would come from printer manufacturers?
Inkjet were always crap for home use, but cheap laser printers have been fine. I bought a Samsung 8 years ago for around $200 / €200. Even if don't use it for a year, it still fires up fine and prints my yearly christmas card or whatever odd job it gets. I have bought new toner once, in 2020. In the first years of usage I used it weekly, because I had a hobby that involved a lot of paperwork . Nowadays it is hardly used but still works.
If youre willing to pay more, get a good color laser printer and most of these issues will be gone
nowadays (especially with HP and Dell), printers come with privacy violating spyware included and require an always-on internet connection to function. It's an absolute joke what they try to get away with
i bought a laser printer many years ago and have no problems!!
I've got retro printers at home, both networked laser printers HP's from the early 2000s and they're mostly trouble free
It's crazy how a crappy, beige-grey, paper muncher from a quarter of a century ago can be so nostalgia inducing
I don't think nostalgia is the word we're looking for here...
I have a Canon BJC 210 printer. I bought a used printer a few years ago without inks. It didn't want to work, then it didn't detect the ink. After several hours of attempts, a test page suddenly printed using a button on the printer. The printer still works on the LPT port. It is possible that old printers had a chip that prevented them from working properly after a few years. A good movie. Regards.
Wow, thanks for the video! Reminded me of my early experiences with computing in late 90s, early 2000s 😅 I also think it is important to have such videos on the channel… at least as a warning to anyone thinking about getting into retro devices of any kind 😄
I'm convinced that consumer-level printers are a scam. Between the exorbitant running costs, the need to compromise between speed and quality, and their ability to simply not work for no good reason (often after working just mere minutes before), SOHO printers are simply not worth it. I'd rather just make the occasional mission down to my local print shop and get it done there.
Oh they absolutely are if they're inkjet
@@sn1000kentry-level laser printers are even worse. The cost of replacement toner for the cheapest color laser printers is absolutely staggering. (Though for people who go long stretches without printing anything, that can still be better. Inkjet is better for people who print regularly.)
When I saw the title of this video, the first thing I thought was, "This is going to be a big waste of time, energy and money." I started my technician career working for Xerox, so I've seen and worked on every type of print engine from ink jet to high volume commercial. This is exactly how these printers are designed to fail. Ink jet printers are supposed to only last 3 years (max) with recommended usage. Even commercial ink jet machines required a print head replacement after 2 or 3 years. I hated every single one in my territory. As for a laser printer of that vintage, more bad news. Ink jet printers were making huge leaps in photo printing at the time. This put pressure on the big companies to pour money in to advance the toner and developer in their machines. Colour toner machines were putting out dark, muddy photo prints. Lots of innovation happened which was great for pushing the quality of both wet and dry ink engines. Unfortunately this resulted in about a 5 year life span of dry toner. Developer and toner was getting much better to use less toner (part of the muddy picture problem) and smaller particles to deliver toner to the page more accurately. Some commercial printers might have had longer toner support but I doubt anything would be later than 10 years. This is also the time when machines were moving from an analog engine to digital. So basically lots happening in the printing world with a large turnover of both technology and supplies.
So clearly what he needs is the early-1990s Tektronix solid-ink printer that my advisor had when I was an undergrad. He used it for printing overheads for project proposals, and apparently it easily paid for itself in convincing funding agencies that we were Serious Researchers, but wow was that a machine. It was basically a huge finicky tank -- large enough to make laser printers of the era look compact, and very solid when it was working correctly. But when it wasn't, it had failure states that "normal" printers hadn't even dreamed of. My favorite failure was when the final "fusing" hot-roller failed. It was still able to deposit little dots of solid ink on the paper in the right colors, so when you looked at the printout it looked almost okay -- but, since the ink was in little solid dots rather than spread out, the transparencies were effectively black-and-white when projected.
You should see the state of the art Xerox Baltoro inkjet printer. Absolute trash. A Frankenstein nightmare of modules from different machines that occasionally produce poor quality print, but mostly jam and don't work.
We used to have a bjc-4000 and the head was clogging all the time. My dad used to sink the head assembly into alcohol to fix it, but a hammer "accidentally" hit the printer one day and got replaced with an Epson-480. Another epic failure. As a suggestion for an old laser printer, I had a HP Laserjet 6L until 2012. Great 90s asthetic. Bulletproof thing, replaced it with a Samsung color laser printer.
For a 90s inkjet, I would strongly suggest a HP Deskjet 840 or 880. They were pretty reliable and had a cool retractable mechanism for printed pages
I am 49 and my first memory of a computer was my Dad's Model I Tandy. I remember being 4 or 5 years old and sitting on his lap watching him do payroll for our business on it. He would always have to fiddle with the cassette tape volume in order to get the software to load properly. Then a few years later he got me a Tandy CoCo 2 and then a CoCo 3. After that in the 80s, when I was a teenager, I would come home from school and handle setting up and troubleshooting computer problems at our work. I reached my limit trying to get our Apple Laserwriter to work with our PCs. We had to hire someone to get it printing with either Windows 386 or 3.0, I can't recall. Then I remember Windows 95 came out and it just worked. I also remember the nightmare of trying to get programs to run on the PC with only 640k of available memory, we had expanded and extended memory and had to have drivers, such as the mouse driver, loaded into that in order for PageMaker to have enough conventional RAM to load. Quarterdesk memory manager is what we used. All of our Macs in the 80s just worked, but I was always trying to get a PC in the mix.