Why Does My Printer Want a Divorce?

Robert Boucher

For over 20 years I have used the same IIe (with Zip Chip) and an Epson
FX 1050 printer on a daily basis. Three days ago I temporarily installed
an Apicorn parallel printer card to use an Epson 740 (ink jet) printer.
Now, with either card the 1050 starts to print in the middle of the page
and prints garbage for a few lines (often without a line feed) and then
stops. Using a simple BASIC program the printer prints correctly and the
printer self test prints correctly. The computer seems to be working
fine without the printer. I have a CFFA card, 1 meg RamFactor, Apple
High Speed SCSI card connected to a Zip Drive, AE Timemaster card, Video
7 RGB 80 column card and the two printer cards.

I have tried (not necessarily in this order):

1. Cleaning the computer and printer.
2. Changing printer cables.
3. Reseating the computer chips.
4. Cleaning all of the card connectors.
5. Changing the slot location for either printer card.
6. Adding a line feed in AppleWorks 5.
7. Trying different AppleWorks files.
8. Loading AppleWorks and files from a Zip disk.

How do I convince the 1050 nothing happened with the 740? If I can't
should I ask for sole custody of the extra paper, ribbons, etc. for the
1050? I might want to marry another one!

Michael J. Mahon

Robert Boucher wrote:
> For over 20 years I have used the same IIe (with Zip Chip) and an Epson
> FX 1050 printer on a daily basis. Three days ago I temporarily installed
> an Apicorn parallel printer card to use an Epson 740 (ink jet) printer.
> Now, with either card the 1050 starts to print in the middle of the page
> and prints garbage for a few lines (often without a line feed) and then
> stops. Using a simple BASIC program the printer prints correctly and the
> printer self test prints correctly. The computer seems to be working
> fine without the printer. I have a CFFA card, 1 meg RamFactor, Apple
> High Speed SCSI card connected to a Zip Drive, AE Timemaster card, Video
> 7 RGB 80 column card and the two printer cards.
>
> I have tried (not necessarily in this order):
>
> 1. Cleaning the computer and printer.
> 2. Changing printer cables.
> 3. Reseating the computer chips.
> 4. Cleaning all of the card connectors.
> 5. Changing the slot location for either printer card.
> 6. Adding a line feed in AppleWorks 5.
> 7. Trying different AppleWorks files.
> 8. Loading AppleWorks and files from a Zip disk.
>
> How do I convince the 1050 nothing happened with the 740? If I can't
> should I ask for sole custody of the extra paper, ribbons, etc. for the
> 1050? I might want to marry another one!

;-)

What do you think is "remembering" your indiscretion with the younger
inkjet printer? ;-)

There is nothing in an Apple II that remembers configuration, unless you
have changed something on disk--like a printer driver in an application.

If it's not software configuration, then I'd suspect cable and
connectors--including the printer card edge connector, since those
are the things you touched when doing your experiment.

-michael

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