Old HP DeskJet/ScanJet Power Supplies Failing? 32
[null] asks: "Has anyone experienced problems with HP DeskJet printers (mostly 600 series) or ScanJet 4100C due to the power supply going bad? I've just got back from a friend whose scanner is currently toast as the power supply decided to put out something other than the 30VDC/400mA/14W it is spec'd for. I'm extremely suspicious because I have a DeskJet 660Cse with the same power supply brick that was working fine up until a month ago when it would go from printing fine to printing several sheets of garbage out of any given print job. I checked it with my tester and saw it giving out 37.5VDC (25% over spec). This link from HP PartSurfer lists the HP products using this power supply and has a picture. This power supply usually featuers a model number of C2175A molded on it. My friend's supply was listed as made by Lucent and mine is by NMB, causing me to wonder if the design itself is possibly defective. Google is not being very helpful in finding people with similar problems, and we are talking about pretty old hardware here that people would probably throw out rather than bother trying to order parts for. HP also has recalls on power supplies for DeskJet 800/900 series and some PhotoSmart 1x00 series printers. How about it, anyone else had problems?"
Um... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Um... (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, that recall is for a physical defect, a power cord that can crack open and expose live contacts, not for an electronic flaw.
So what is this post about really, some sort of smear campaign against HP?
That thing with the voltage is the sort of think like the SULFNBK.EXE thing, where people tell their friends, then their friends go "Oh Man, Mine is 37 volts too!!?!?" and then it spreads, none of them smart enough to know it's a normal thing.
Re:Um... (Score:1)
Re:Um... (Score:2)
Seriously. If you and your friend get power from the same place it is possible there is a problem. Say, 130V AC instead of 120... etc.
And, it could just be fluke. And, after several years hardware will fail.
fact of life.
Re:Um... (Score:1)
*looks at UPS* 117V, 60Hz
Re:Um... (Score:1)
One thing, do the power supplies run hot? On some computer products I have bought recently (like Linksys switches), they use extremely cheap switching power supplies that are underpowered, and run so hot as to scorch and make burn marks on the label of the wall wart. I've seen similar recalls on some DSL and cable modems recently.
Really, heat is the main long term killer of power supplies. I do agree with you, it seems that overall, in the last year to two electronics, especially power electronics, have been really falling in quality.
strange... (Score:2, Interesting)
She's experiencing the same problems as the poster, and now i'm even more intrigued. I think i might actually do some work instead of being the stand-in for BOFH.
A few problems with this story (Score:5, Informative)
The Deskjet 600 series has been around for something along the line of 8 years (I had a 660Cse with my state-of-the-art 486). If the problem is just beginning to happen now, I'd recon that the printer will already be failing due to other reasons (the 600 series has a blotting sponge, and a few other parts which are designed to fail after a few years). Finally, after 1997(?), the 600 series was demoted HP's super-cheap product line - simply put, they were horrible printers to begin with. If you want a quality printer, you're going to have to spend more than $50.
In addition, all of the Deskjet 800/900 series took power from standard two or three prong AC plugs, NOT DC transformers. The recall was due to a manufacturing defect in the plug, not the circuitry.
Finally, I'd also like to note that the power bricks for all the 600 series were interchangable, but HP changed to a significantly different design for the 700 series, and eliminated them entirely with the 800/900 series. Working in an institutino which owns 150+ Deskjet 600s, I can report that I've seen a bunch of the power bricks to fail, but the printers typically fail of other reasons long before that (very fuzzy output, excesive noise, bad paper feeders, and other mechanical failures). They typically break within 2 years of purchase for mechanical reasons.
My 41000 (Score:1)
MFR: Lucent
Real Voltage: 38V
Device: Scan Jet 4100C
Status: Works great!
driver (Score:1)
Sounds like you just need to reinstall the driver.
I doubt it's the power supply unless there is no sign of life from the printer at all, or if the printer literally starts on fire or something.
Re:driver (Score:1)
I used to have a dj660c, the driver was just as bad as the printer. the thing that usually fixed printing issues for me was to uninstall the printer driver, reboot, reinstall.
as far as the power supply, I know of several of this vintage printer in service still. I've not heard of any real issues with it. (other than getting lost during a move)
Re:driver (Score:1)
Re:driver (Score:1)
Re:driver (Score:1)
Re:driver (Score:1)
Re:driver (Score:2)
Can't agree with you there. If the output from the power supply is very out-of-spec (low, or ripply) the device running off it will do some very strange things, while appearing to be normal a lot of the time.
You'll be seeing a lot more of this SOON (Score:5, Informative)
Low-ESR Aluminum Electrolytic Failures Linked to Taiwanese Raw Material Problems
Nic Components [niccomp.com] reproduces this [niccomp.com] article from Passive Component Industry Magazine [paumanokgroup.com] telling the tale of a defecting scientist who stole an electrolyte formula for low ESR capacitors and GOT IT WRONG! Natch that the stuff made it to market and the result could be millions of premature motherboard, power supply, and other consumer electronics failures.
Re:You'll be seeing a lot more of this SOON (Score:5, Interesting)
This phenomena noted by AC is real. I have noted from much "autopsy" that failure of aluminum electrolytic capacitors is very common after only a few years, even if that, of service.
This is the failure mechanism: the aluminum electrolytics are highly stressed by the high pulse currents generated by switching power supplies. Within a few hours ( often in the thousands, but could be in the hundreds ), the ESR (Equivalent Series Resistance) of the capacitor begins to climb. When that occurs, the capacitor begins not only failing to accept the current pulse which was supposed to charge it, but begins to dissipate that energy, which was intended for the load, as heat. It gets hot. Fast. Then it pops open as its releases its innards of boiling electrolyte. ( Thats why you see those little grooves pressed into the top of the electrolytic capacitor cans...they are stress reliefs... they are supposed to rip open and vent the capacitor before it holds the pressure of boiling electrolyte in long enough to explode. Literally. )
I see this a lot in the main switching power supply in PC's. The tip off is watching the power supply with an analog oscilloscope while loading the power supply with things such as 12V 25watt lamps while it is powering the computer. Under running circumstances, this amount of power may only be consumed during a disk seek, but to make the phenomena continuously visible, you have to provide this extra load. If the power supply is having problems, you will see it drop voltage as its capacitors fail to supply the energy. Usually at a 60Hz rate, as only one of the two capacitors in the main voltage doubler is failing, 120HZ drops mean they are both failing.
These instantaneous and very-short lived power glitches do wonderful things to the software being executed. It makes the computer do the damndest things you ever did see. You would think you were hit by a really weird virus... and may spend months trying to track it down. I did. By the time I was closing in on this, I was seriously concerned that my debuggers themselves were infected, because weird jumps kept happening - for no reason at all as I could discern! The pattern had absolutely no rhyme or reason to it as far as I could see, and it was driving me absolutely nuts.
Being I've seen this now, I am quite quick to grab the oscilloscope and test lamps ( banks of #93 or other automotive bulbs connected to a disk-drive power connector so I can just plug 'em in to whatever spare disk-drive power connector I can find in the computer ) when I see unexplained stuff that looks too weird to be a virus.
(Note: Power-up with the bulbs connected. The step-function of the load, as well as cold-resistance of the lamps - make it very inadvisable to connect/remove lamp load while the power supply is energized. )
Re:You'll be seeing a lot more of this SOON (Score:2)
As for your adventures with the mysterious jumping phantom hardware virus you have both my empathy and sympathy.
Re:You'll be seeing a lot more of this SOON (Score:1)
After opening the UPS up you could see one of the resistors right off the lead from the AC power had blown. After soldering on a new one the UPS worked just fine.
I've no idea if it's related to this or not. It was an APC SmartUPS 600.
(Just to even it out a bit, I want to mention that it has been a good UPS. Years ago, before the resistor blew, the battery failed, while it was still under warranty, and APC was very quick to send a replacement unit after I called them. Other than those two things it's never failed to protect my computer, and I've had it for at least 6 years, maybe as many as 8.)
Re:You'll be seeing a lot more of this SOON (Score:2)
I've been seeing instances for over a year now. Ask anyone who repairs camcorders about a "fishy" smell. They've been seeing it even longer.
And I've officially named it "capacitor disease", by the way.
P.S.Watch out for stuff that at some point during shipment gets left where it might have been exposed to below-freezing temperatures. Water-based electrolyte is one thing, ice-based another.
Strange configuration... (Score:2)
I've got an old HP scanner here, myself, model IIcx. It accepts 120VAC from a standard IEC connector on the back, located beside the 50-pin Centronics SCSI connector and terminator. This big, legal-size monster weighs an easy 25 or 30 pounds. The servos inside of it produce a whine that is not dissimilar to a Formula 1 engine, and visibly shake the bench it lives on from the torque produced.
It makes decent scans by default, and positively beautiful ones once properly calibrated to the output device.
Powered up continuously for almost a decade and seeing occasional use over the same period, I expect it to keep going more-or-less indefinately. This is due in no small part to the fact that good OSS drivers exist and that SCSI just refuses to die - there's little chance of it being outmodded anytime soon - but also because of the iron content.
Next time you buy a $100 box of plastic and genuine Chinese air labeled "HP Scanner", expecting it to last forever, remember this: They don't make 'em like they used to, kid. Meanwhile, you might want to reexamine your use of the word "old."
Good luck with your riceburner.
Hrm... (Score:1)
ye gods (Score:1)
Coincidences do happen... (Score:2)
The fact that your and your friend's power supply units both failed at around the same time may be significant, but all evidence (eg, the lack of any similar experiences pulled up by Google, the fact that your PSUs were made by different manufacturers, and years apart too I'll bet) suggests otherwise.
If you Ask Slashdot you're bound to get one or two people with similar experiences, simply because so many people have HP deskjets and scanners - if you throw a rock into the air when your standing in a crowd then you're going to hit someone.
(Yeah, I'm really in the groove proverb-wise right now.)
If you get more than 20 then perhaps it might be time to dig even deeper but, as I said, there are so many of these PSUs out there even that number might be statistically insignificant - what's 20 when there might well be 20 million of these PSUs out there?
Talk to HP, see what they have to say. But, before you start getting heavy with them, at least find out what's wrong with your own device. You'd feel rather stupid if reinstalling the driver or replacing the parallel cable sorts out the garbage that it's currently printing.
Re:Coincidences do happen... (Score:3, Insightful)
The plural of anecdote is not data.
HP 4200C (Score:1)
replacement for the HP power supply (Score:1)
Scanjet 4100C deja vu (Score:1)
Just yesterday i repaired mine with a power supply problem. And quite a nasty problem. The metal brick the scanjet has underneath contains the main electronics PCB which has all the logic and also a second-stage power supply that generates all the regulated voltages like +5V, +12V and so on.
My brick also has +37V without load, but that's normal - it's just a transformer with a rectifier with no regulation. With the scanjet connected it's around +34V, but anyway everything is regulated so no problem with that unless it goes too high.
Anyway, the problem itself was with the PCB in the scanner, not the brick. My symptom was that the scanner sometimes turned on, sometimes it didn't, specially when moving it around. The fault: material fatigue. The trace going from the negative input from the connector got almost cut at some point. The order in the PCB is something like: negative input -> L1 (or L2, don't recall exactly) -> ferrite filter bridge -> capacitor. The cut was between the ferrite bridge and the capacitor or somewhat between that.
The fix: a simple soldered cable from the negative input on the PCB to another big ground on another part. Of course this probably renders your scanner to be non-FCC compliant or such, but anyway FCC doesn't matter here in Argentina
Works... but i wonder how long it'll last until another trace is cut...