beachycove
Well-known member
My endeavours to find parts to repair a LW 12/640 having thus far failed (the multipurpose feed is dead as the dodo), I recently spotted a LW8500 being sold by a (reasonably) local eBay seller, and decided to take the plunge. This was with a view to improving on my wait-times for complex documents that I need to print regularly, as well as the inevitability of moving to LPR from AppleTalk. (The LaserWriter 630 Pro that I have been using is also a good deal older, and though extremely reliable and cheap to run, can be painfully slow when printing complex PDFs and the like; it will be re-purposed).
I had known that a LW8500 is a mammoth beast capable of functioning as an A3/ 11x17" printer as required, but what I was unaware of before seeing one in the flesh for the first time is that it is so big that it is possible actually to close the multipurpose door on 150 sheets of A4/Letter paper and never know they were there.... Kind of reminds me of a 1950s fridge, truth be told, but "cushty" all the same.
The toner cartridge appears to be past saving, alas, but that is usually par for the course with an older laser (lines on the paper output from the drum due to a failed blade, or something). The printer has had, I was told, precisely one cartridge in it since bought new in 1997. The original OEM cartridge had a print capacity of 14,000 pages @ 5% coverage (they can be had with 20k capacity now), and the printer has a lifetime page count of around 13,600. That was quite a printer to purchase back then for the sake of so few pages.
They have the reputation of being a good deal less reliable than some of the older LaserWriter models, but with that low a page count, the thing will hopefully keep me going for a goodly while. And I'm-a-gonna get me some A3 for use when printing drafts of documents that I want to annotate extensively.
Still looking for a parts 12/640, though, as I have a niche for it too.
I had known that a LW8500 is a mammoth beast capable of functioning as an A3/ 11x17" printer as required, but what I was unaware of before seeing one in the flesh for the first time is that it is so big that it is possible actually to close the multipurpose door on 150 sheets of A4/Letter paper and never know they were there.... Kind of reminds me of a 1950s fridge, truth be told, but "cushty" all the same.
The toner cartridge appears to be past saving, alas, but that is usually par for the course with an older laser (lines on the paper output from the drum due to a failed blade, or something). The printer has had, I was told, precisely one cartridge in it since bought new in 1997. The original OEM cartridge had a print capacity of 14,000 pages @ 5% coverage (they can be had with 20k capacity now), and the printer has a lifetime page count of around 13,600. That was quite a printer to purchase back then for the sake of so few pages.
They have the reputation of being a good deal less reliable than some of the older LaserWriter models, but with that low a page count, the thing will hopefully keep me going for a goodly while. And I'm-a-gonna get me some A3 for use when printing drafts of documents that I want to annotate extensively.
Still looking for a parts 12/640, though, as I have a niche for it too.