My Canon scanner-printer gave me a warning message saying, "B200 Printer Error - Unplug power cord and contact service center." First time I've gotten that one and first time I cdnt fix something by just unplugging and plugging back in. The printer is 3 years old. I havent contacted anyone yet. Any advice? It's a Canon PIXMA MX870. $129 from Amazon. Pretty decent printer, with very cheap 3rd-party ink cartridges. Only complaint is that the color from a jpeg is usually a little flat, not very bright lights. PS I can tolerate sarcasm.
Posted by Dave Grundy (Member # 103) on :
My advice, for what it is worth????
Toss the printer and buy a new one.
Any more...that is about the best way to go when relatively inexpensive peripherals hit the dust.
Posted by Ricardo Davila (Member # 3854) on :
Hey, Old Timer,
Buy a new one !.......It'll be cheaper than what you spend on ink cartridges.
Matter of fact, eventually, you will spend more money in ink cartridges than what you spent buying the home, or office, printer...That is the reason for which, nowadays, printers are so cheap ...Ask me why I know.
I just tossed away 6 old home ( or office ) printers I had acquired in the last ten years....I still have three more left. You know what?.......I have not used any of those three, in the last two years.
I save all my photos, important documents and art work in flash drives. At this moment, I have 6 flash drives with lots of more space for storage available, in each one of them.
Of those 6, I only carry two of them on my key chain holder.....always. They, also, contain the portfolio of my work. So if I need to show my work to a potential customer, all I have to do is just plug the flash drive into my laptop and put on a show.......Which, by the way, the combination of these two devices, is a hell of a sales tool for any sign painter.
If and when I need to print something, I just go to the Public Library, pull out my flash drive and get my prints there for 10 cents a sheet........or, if I have to make a transparency of my art work ( on acetate ), I go to Office Depot, give them my flash drive, tell them what I want and they will make my transparencies for 52 cents per 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of acetate....In both instances, all I have with me is the flash drive where what I need to print is already stored.
In my case, it is cheaper this way, because I live within a radius of 2 miles from each one these two places.......The Public Library and Office Depot.
I hope this helps and, also, I truly hope you are in a good mood, today.
RD
P.S. Here are some flash drives you may want to look at:
[ May 08, 2014, 10:41 PM: Message edited by: Ricardo Davila ]
Posted by Dave Grundy (Member # 103) on :
To add to Ricardo's comments...
I have a whole bunch of old "stuff" that still works but is dusty and plain ole OLD. It is taking up room in a closet and is of no use to me anymore.
In a couple of weeks our little town is holding a "town wide" yard sale. I plan on dusting off and cleaning up old keyboards and mice and cables and other "once valuable" stuff and putting it out for sale starting at 50 cents and maybe up to one dollar. Let someone else benefit from a "good deal"
Then I will have space in my closet for more "old crap"!!!
The one thing I won't be putting out for sale is my Wacom tablet..It is dusty but I am now at an age where I have time to explore it's possibilities without any "work" pressure..Hell I might take it down to Mexico in September just to play around with it.
Posted by old paint (Member # 549) on :
got the wife a new EPSON 1430 13" X 19" edge to edge printer as she does mostly photos from 4" X 5", 8" X 10".....once in while a 13" X 19". 6 carts, in it and prints beautiful. $299.00 was the list on this one. STAPLES had it on sale for $199. when i went to pay for it guy asked me if my present printer was still working, i said yea and why do you ask? well we got a $50 credit toward this new printer if you bring in any old printer!!! i said ANY OLD PRINTER? He said yep......wellllllll i dug out my old old($400.00 new) HP 550, you remember these......was the 1st tri color cart and a black one)))))he plug it in at the store and it cycled and was ready to print))))) so i got the $299 13" x 19" printer for $149.00!!!!!
[ May 09, 2014, 09:27 AM: Message edited by: old paint ]
Posted by Glenn Taylor (Member # 162) on :
You'll like the 1430. I've been running mine for a little over a year and have been pleased with it's consistency.
Posted by Marty Happy (Member # 302) on :
I have a 2 year old Canon MP640 that had the same B200 error message a month ago. I tried all sorts of tricks I found on the internet from people who claimed to solve the problem with no luck. Really annoyed me because there was no drop in quality of prints and I had virtually full cartridges in it... always used Canon cartridges. This is the third Canon in a row to fail for me at around the 2-3 year mark and I am not a heavy user.... almost seems that there is a chip in the machine that programs it to quit after 2 years.
I liked Canon printers but after 3 strikes I'm done with that company. Went to an Epson WF-3540... hope I have better luck with it.
Posted by Dennis Kiernan (Member # 12202) on :
You guys using the Epsons -- can you get cheap ink for them? The Canon-compatible cartridges are very easy to find at Amazon for about $1 or less per cartridge, altho Canon charges ten times as much for them.
Posted by Si Allen (Member # 420) on :
dennis CIS ink has refillable carts/bulk ink systems for a lot of printere. the EPSON 1430 is one of them. i have an HP K850.......13 X 19" officejet convereted to the bulk ink from cis. the complete kit for mine was $49.00. each cart in the HP retails for $38.00!!!!
Posted by Len Mort (Member # 7030) on :
I have been using continuous ink systems for several years, great savings in ink.
Posted by Dave Sherby (Member # 698) on :
Epson is not much better. One of my old Epson's gave me an error code and to call tech support. I called them and they told me the code was "The printer has reached the end of it's serviceable life". When I questioned them on this it turns out that the felt pad at the bottom of the printer whose purpose is to absorb ink during the cleaning cycles has been determined to be full by the number of cleaning and charging cycles the printer had performed. There was nothing that could be done to get the printer working again. I opened it up before I tossed it and the felt pad was at most half colored with ink. Planned obsolescence at it's finest.
Posted by Dennis Kiernan (Member # 12202) on :
Dave, that seems impossibly stupid. Why wd they not make it so that the felt pad cd be simply lifted and replaced with a fresh one?
I think the Canons have a similar accumulation of ink under the printer head and it gets filled up.
Posted by Dennis Kiernan (Member # 12202) on :
The printer is fixed! Easy as pie. Amazon has jillions of customer reviews on lots of their items. I looked up MX870 B200 error and there was a lot of discussion about it. Among them I found this review from a user:
"I mentioned in an earlier comment how I fixed the B200 error. In my case, all I had to do was to press and hold the STOP button with the printer off and to keep holding it in as it powered up until it finished booting. The B200 error went away and never returned, even after several on/off cycles." ------- I tried it and it worked. I replied in a comment (edited): "Terrific! I had the same B200 message on a 3-yr-old machine. I tried your method using the Stop button and it did the trick. BTW I dont think the malfunction had anything to do with the printer head. (the problem many others had had). I had lifted the lid over the platen glass and could see that the grey bar under the glass was out of phase. Instead of being in its resting place on the left, it was over on the right, with the tape trailing along behind it. When I powered up, holding the Stop button, I could hear it slide across like it does at the end of a scan."
"I spent a long time talking to a Canon techie the other night about the B200 error. He was intelligent, personable and patient. Told me all about the loyalty program etc but never mentioned the simple problem of the out-of-phase scanner bar or whatever it's called, or the simple fix with the Stop button. Is it that Canon techies are just not well-informed about their own product -- jeez, not as well-informed as I, an old relic from the early 20th Century? Or have they been instructed by Canon management to play dumb?"
[ May 12, 2014, 11:14 PM: Message edited by: Dennis Kiernan ]
Posted by shirley houston (Member # 4021) on :
LDProducts.com has good prices on cartridges for Epson 1430 printers. Actually all brands of printers. They guarantee their cartridges will not void your warranty on a new printer.
They are a good company and I have only had problems with one set of they cartridges. They immediately replaced them.
A bundle of cartridges 4 black, 2 each of all other color cartridges are around $70.00 plus shipping. They also have great sales -- free shipping many times, plus 10% discusount on purchases over $50.
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