Is it time to retire the scanner ?

[Steve O'Hara-Smith]

On Sun, 23 Oct 2016 18:25:04 +0200
Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> wrote:

> On Sun, 23 Oct 2016 16:57:49 +0100, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> > On Sun, 23 Oct 2016 17:28:01 +0200
> > Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> wrote:
> > 
> > > On Sun, 23 Oct 2016 09:51:00 -0500 (CDT), Valeri Galtsev wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > On Sun, October 23, 2016 8:58 am, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> > > > > On Sun, 23 Oct 2016 13:53:34 +0200
> > > > > Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > >> On FreeBSD, getting that printer to work in CUPS requires no big
> > > > >> efforts, you don't even need the PPD file. You even don't _need_
> > > > >> to use CUPS as you can print PS directly to the printer - no
> > > > >> driver needed, only a printer spooler. And this hasn't changed
> > > > >> in 10 years...
> > > > > 	`
> > > > > 	Probably not in the previous 10 years too (well it's
> > > > > almost 2017 and the LJ4000 came out in 1997), I know for sure
> > > > > that you could spool PS to a Laserjet 4 with lpr/lpd under
> > > > > FreeBSD 1.1.5.1 because I did just that.
> > > > 
> > > > And to add to that, HP keeps making supplies for their this old
> > > > printers. We do have HP LaserJet 4050 in our Department which was
> > > > purchased around 2001 or 2002. Still works, HP still makes toners.
> > > > Kudos HP!
> > > 
> > > Even "worse": The toner cartridges are quite cheap. People usually
> > > think I'm lying when I tell them my home printing costs are 30 Euro
> > > every 3 years (this is 10 Euro per year, less than 1 Euro per month).
> > > Try to beat _that_ with typical consumer ink cartridge costs... ;-)
> > 
> > 	About the same as mine using oversized 'CIS' cartridges and bulk
> > ink in my Brother inkjet (cheap A3 - hard to resist), but then we don't
> > print much perhaps a ream or so per year.
> 
> Some years ago, I met a HP Officejet printer with ink cartridges
> (not combined with printing heads!) where you could easily (and
> also quite cleanly!) refill the ink from big "bulk ink" bottles
> with a set of syringes. Needless to say, it had a scanner with
> sheet feeder, a fax, a built-in SD card reader and USB slot, a
> color display - and it even was networked! That was the first

	Pretty close to the spec of my Brother - swapping A3 for fax, and
bearing in mind that the refillable cartridges (also not attached to the
heads) are a third party add on (cheap though).

> time when I tought that there are ink printers which aren't crap
> to rip off the customer. And it supported FreeBSD of course. :-)

	That's the downside with the Brother - I have a Centos userland
running in a jail so that I can run a linux install of CUPS to host the
Brother driver. In theory I could put the bits in place in a FreeBSD
install of CUPS but last time I tried I spent a couple of days getting
progressively more confused.

-- 
Steve O'Hara-Smith                          |   Directable Mirror Arrays
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