HP laserjet 2420d – why is my new one so lazy?

[Lyra]

OK, I've tried to get an answer to this from the HP site/forum/tech support but I'm rapidly losing the will to live over there, so I wonder if anyone here has any ideas.

I have a brand new HP LJ 2420d which appeared to work perfectly via the USB connection with my G4 dp 1.25GHz, running 10.3.6. Until I started to use it to print out 'real' jobs instead of Sudoku grids.

It prints short jobs of a few pages quite happily. Anything longer than four or five pages, it stops the job after between 2 and 10 pages (error no. -536870165 on screen). If I try and simply restart the job from on-screen, it starts from the beginning and stops the job at exactly the same place. If I start the job from inside the application from the next page, it will then print to the end of the chapter, regardless of how long it is. When it stops, the printer flashes 'data received' but doesn't recognise that it has a job and won't restart it from the printer control panel. It seems to happen only when I queue jobs, but I can't be sure of that.

Since my work consists of preparing books for publication, this will drive me nuts if I can't get it sorted.

Has anyone else got the same printer – is it something in the settings that I've missed? Any ideas will be received with a pathetic show of gratitude – i've got a 40 chapter job to print ...

[biff1of1]

Lyra
I am not familiar with that particular model but I know when that exact thing happens on a HP 5000 or 5100 model the first thing I look at is how much memory is resident in the printer.

I notice that you only specified the 2420d and not the dn model. It might help if you get off USB and go to ethernet with the addition of the EIO card, HP part no. J7934A SRP at 349.00 according to HP.

You can also kinda get a feel of that by looking at you file size. In lieu of that, I've found that on occassion the file type or image type within a document can some times throw a wrench into processing the image.

To reiterate it, as I understand it (at least on my two HP printers), if your book is 30 or 40 mb in size and your printer only has the base 48mb of memory it will have a problem.

Hope these ideas help, please let me know what you come up with as a solution-good luck.
Chris

[Lyra]

Thanks Chris, but .... how much???!!!

I'm printing the book out chapter by chapter, rather than all at once. The chapters (in InDesign) are typically between 1 and 2MB, so I didn't think I was asking too much of it.

The ironic thing is that my old printer, a 2100, coped perfectly happily, albeit slowly, with everything I threw at it, but I did have to use an Ethernet connection for that – I must confess I didn't realise it made that much difference.

Would installing more memory help? – the EIO card isn't an option at the moment.