Laser printers should be dirt cheap and plentiful if you look around. There were a lot of them in business use, and for a long time.

A replacement toner will most likely cost more than the printer, but it will last you a long time.

Oooh, just remembered another good late 90s model: The 4000/4050. Think it was the successor to the LJ5?

I always liked my HP Laserjet 6MP. Too bad I had to get rid of it when I moved. I think mine was made in 1998, but it looked really retro even back then.

oerk wrote:

Laser printers should be dirt cheap and plentiful if you look around. There were a lot of them in business use, and for a long time.

A replacement toner will most likely cost more than the printer, but it will last you a long time.

Oooh, just remembered another good late 90s model: The 4000/4050. Think it was the successor to the LJ5?

I actually have a 4000n, still hooked up to my network.

You can get toner on eBay really cheap BTW. Sometimes < $10.

I used to have about ten dot matrix printers, mostly Panasonic KX-P's ranging from the 1131 to the 2624 acoustic edition with the special paper feeder further modified for military use (most of them were ex-army).

Now all I have left are KX-P 1695, KX-P 1624, Star XB24-250* and a broken Epson LQ300. M y main printer is a HP LaserJet 4M Plus, this is still what all machines I am using communicate with via Ethernet and until I need color printing I won't give that one up, though I did have to bodge it to get around the classic roller problem. I miss the others I had, especially that 2624, social services stole them along with a reasonable amount of my other possessions whilst I was in the care of them running up a bill of almost £10,000 if you count my mother's stuff that they also stole/destroyed. I start driving soon so hopefully in the future I'll be able to get some of them back, at least, the same model again as sellers can't post them and I'd have to go and get them.

*Main reason I am here is to thank whoever bumped this thread up (or started it) because you've reminded me I need to do some repairs to my Star, it stopped working about 8 years back and it was my favorite large printer, very useful for printing larger diagrams or blocks of text on 15"x11" fanfold. Apparently it can take a color ribbon but I've never loaded one... Has some weird cartridge slot inside, for fonts perhaps? As well as a 60mm fan in the back - when a printer has a fan and isn't a laser printer you know it's serious.

King_Corduroy wrote:

How much does a toner refill generally cost? I mean if I find one that works for cheap am I going to be paying through the nose for ink?

Also swaaye why do you keep deleting your posts. 🤣

Used (and they all are at this point), an LJ4M+'s is never worth more than $50 for the base machine with 4mb memory (additional ram can be in the form of 72 pin 60ns FPM SIMMs which isn't all that expensive in 4-16mb sizes) and PostScript. Addons like the 500 page tray and the duplexer however add to the value (I've never seen a working duplexer but the extra tray isn't all that rare). Parts like fusers and roller sets are generally $30-$40 and new toner cartridges are $70-$100. Network interfaces are just about free because most of them sold with one in some form or another.

The font cartridges from the older LJ II and III seem to work in the LJ4. Just remember to put the printer offline before inserting or removing them.

In the late 90s I had inkjets. I hate inkjets and never want to see one again. In retrospect I think they are the worst printing technology that ever succeeded in the market. I'd rather have a dot matrix than an inkjet. For all their limitations, at least dot matrix printers actually worked. Inkjets are anger in a can.

I bought a used Laserjet 5 on eBay a few years ago, I think it cost something like $60 total, half of that was shipping. It's not hard to find stuff like this being liquidated in large numbers. Mine was made in 1997. At the time It had about 25k pages on it, which is low for those printers. I don't know what the page count is now.
If you look at buying a 2nd hand printer, the page counter is good information to have, but be aware that it's technically possible for the counter to be changed, if the seller is unethical and knows how to do it. Also, the way the counter works is a bit goofy, and this can make it inaccurate for some usage scenarios.
I've read that it's a bad idea to buy a printer that comes with a toner cartridge inside, because they can spill and make a huge mess. Also keep in mind how heavy these things are. It would be easy to mess up the shipping. Buy from somebody who has experience selling similar printers on a regular basis, so you know it will be shipped properly. Buying from an inexperienced seller can be a risk because they're much more likely to make a shipping mistake.
Sometimes old laser printers show up in thrift stores, but that's a matter of luck.

I use my LJ5 daily. I've added a JetDirect card for connection over ethernet, but this function doesn't work quite right. I don't know if it's just my card, or if it's a flaw in how they're programmed. If I start one print job, then start sending others in a fairly rapid sequence, it will drop some of them. It apparently has a period during the printing process where the network link goes deaf.
Nowadays I usually print from a PC that's sitting next to the printer with an LPT connection. LPT has always worked perfectly, it's just the ethernet that's quirky.
I love the cheaply available toner and the simple fact that it works every day without being a source of stress. Paper jams only happen if I try to fill the paper completely, so I don't do that.
It has recently started making a sort of scraping/grinding noise at cold startup. I should probably find out more about that, I wonder if there's something that should be lubricated.
I wish I had a 500 page (really a bit bigger) tray. I have the standard 250 page tray, and trying to split a ream exactly in half isn't realistic so it ends up taking 3 loads per ream. I don't like having partial reams laying around, I'd rather drop whole reams in at once.

The Windows 2000 driver is better than the XP driver. XP uses a Microsoft supplied version which has some features removed. It's not a real big deal though. I thought Microsoft broke support for these printers starting with Vista, but maybe that's wrong. Anyway, there is the option of adding a PostScript module, and I would think that should expand the compatibility to almost anything, unless I'm wrong about how that works.
RAM expansion is done with 72pin SIMMs, but it's particular about what type of SIMMs it will accept. Things that "ought" to work, won't work because they aren't jumpered the right way. I don't remember the rules anymore, but it was detailed on some web site a few years ago and I assume the site might still be out there.

When I think of printers from the 90s one comes to mind right away, the LaserJet 4, it just screams 90s awesomeness. I've got a 4M+ with maxed out RAM and a JetDirect card, it's a tough old thing, though a tad on the large side. Print quality is excellent and it's generally quite reliable.

shamino wrote:

It has recently started making a sort of scraping/grinding noise at cold startup.

May want to check the fan. The sleeve bearing or retention ring on it is likely giving out after so long.

As for the JetDirect card, look for possible firmware updates / newer cards and possible memory expansion to the printer itself.