The HP ThinkJet: First Consumer Inkjet Printer

i am very excited for today's video because i've got my hands on one of those things that i've been after for years this is an hp think jet printer now this printer falls into a very unusual category because it is a dot matrix printer but it is not an impact printer and that is because unlike most dot matrix printers that use pins to push a ribbon into the paper this is an inkjet printer but not only is it just an inkjet printer it is the first inkjet printer [Music] now there is quite a lot that is interesting and unusual about this printer which is why i've been wanting to get one for so long because it is an inkjet printer and we have our ink cartridge right here that's it um this is also a really nice system because the print head is integrated into the cartridge which means that you replace that when you replace the ink so it's actually a pretty robust system so robust in fact that that ink cartridge is brand new as ordered only a few days ago that is still available on amazon because despite this thing being from 1984 this mechanism survived long after the printer now this particular printer i have actually opened this again we're going to be opening up and fixing because the paper bail should just latch in place here but on one side it has broken loose so i'm hoping that i can get in there with some baking soda and super glue and repair that but i won't know until we get in there but there's just so much that's interesting about this printer that i want to explore as we get into it so yeah let's get started on that now i want to first start off by taking a closer look at that ink cartridge because that is what is so revolutionary about this thing as opposed to impact printers but we're not going to take quite as much of a look at this one because i have the original one that came with this printer which is probably going to mark up my hands and i'm probably going to have to remove this blue tablecloth so i don't ruin it but this is the original ink cartridge and you can actually just barely see a little hp logo down in there which is pretty cool to see but up here we can see just the few lines there that are part of the print head and how this thing actually works now this one is uh not functional anymore despite actually having ink inside of here now this is kind of a cool thing about these cartridges uh this ink in here is a bladder that just contains all of the ink inside of there you could theoretically puncture this and then refill it if the cartridge still worked but what has happened here is the ink inside of this has weeped down the front as this device has sat for nearly 40 years and it has corroded some of the traces going to the print head now on the print carriage there are contacts that connect to this and then a ribbon cable that goes off to the internal logic for the printer and that's how it controls the print head but since the traces here have just dissolved this one did not work anymore and this is not really repairable so a word of warning if you have one of these you probably want to remove the print cartridge now like i said i was able to buy a brand new print head for this and accompanying ink cartridge so it's still extremely usable from my understanding and reading these are still in use in some industrial printing applications and devices like receipt printers so these are likely going to be made for a very long time now it's really cool seeing some of the different changes that they've made with this printer because it is inkjet instead of impact for example there is no platen we just have the tractor points here because this does actually take tractor paper it's not a friction feed printer but it has these sand coated wheels and this bar instead of a full rubber platen because the printhead does not need to press against anything to leave ink behind it it does also kind of suck because getting paper properly aligned in here has been a bit of a pain with the bad paper bail here it's really not helped but the different uh tractor feed things i guess that one's actually fixed but the other side here is loose to accommodate slightly different widths of paper um i'm not sure if it's supposed to be like that i suspect it is but it means that it's difficult to get the correct width and frequently with impact printers you can kind of rely on the platen to take up some of the slack and press the paper into it but you don't have that here because we just have the two wheels and the paper bail that presses into them even this side is not great so i can understand how the other side broke there we are so yeah the paper bails run up against that and it just feeds the paper through there it's really interesting now the model printer i have here is a 2225c there were many different variations of this printer this one is a parallel printer with an internal power supply but there was also an rs232 printer an hpib printer for the series 80 or series 100 computers that we actually saw in my last video on the hp catalog and there was an hp il version that allowed you to interface with their calculators like the 41cx or the 71b so there were a lot of different versions of this printer which is part of why it's taking me so long to get one now real quick these mode select dip switches are unusual for an lpt printer um that would have made sense if this was an rs232 because you'd probably use this to configure your baud rate bits parody etc but on an lpt printer this is usually used to configure different things like the uh types of line ends is it a new line is it a carriage return is it carriage return new line and those kinds of things and there are some other settings that you need to adjust this is actually working perfectly for me so i haven't looked up what these jumpers do yet i've found a brochure for this i haven't looked for a manual yet but since it works i have not really felt like i needed to but this may have some interesting options like that i definitely had to configure that for uh i have a printer adapter for a commodore pet actually that i want to do a video on at some point and i've had to adjust those for that so those are really not needed as long as the printer works so yeah probably won't be messing with those in this video all right as we move on here i want to get in here so i can try working on that paper pill and i was noticing that i'm going to need torx bits to get in here which is just lovely but i also saw the bottom here where we have you know fcc id you know warning don't open it basically who it's made by where it's made but then also what it is printer that's that's it like if you look on the bottom of a model m keyboard it says ibm model m keyboard or something like that but this just says printer it doesn't say hp think jet printer on the front it doesn't say printer anywhere on the back so i guess they just had to put printer right here on the bottom just so you knew what it was just in case you know i don't know why but i think that is absolutely hilarious okay now let's get this thing open i have not opened this yet so i don't know what i'm in for the integrated power supply does scare me a little bit but it has worked for me so far um we will be checking that out for sure later but i want to try and get that paper bail fixed because i've had to tape it up to do that okay do i need to remove that one probably but i'm just curious i'm not too sure oh well that's good enough nope at least not for that okay all right the top will disconnect easily enough those are buttons for uh resetting the printer doing a line feed or a form feed so that's what those do now i can take a look down in there so line filter is integrated into the connector so that kind of sucks so that can't be replaced but uh at least is not rifa so it's probably not going to blow these capacitors are older this is probably around 1984. i'll see if i find a date on a part at some point while i'm looking in here to see if i can age this actually that motor may have a manufacturing date uh doesn't seem to but uh yeah this should be with uh some better caps in here it's cool seeing the custom hp chips in there for this thing uh not quite sure why other than they could because i mean it is just a parallel printer maybe to control the uh thermal uh processing for the uh ink why is there a ribbon oh wait yeah because of this i was frustrated there's like a keyboard style ribbon cable but actually yeah that makes sense since it has one on the front uh but yeah let's go ahead and look at that paper bail problem here so why is this all floppy oh looks like there's probably just a screw missing yeah screw just goes there man and i don't even have to do a plastic repair so yeah this side there's just a pin and then a c-clip but oddly it doesn't go all the way through so it looks like it was meant to be a post so what will probably make the most sense to repair this is to drill that out and then put a bolt through there so let me dig around here i bet one of the m3 bolts i have in a kit would probably work very well for that so let me go find that okay i've got the m3 bolt kit here and they're just a little too big i could drill out the aluminum and that um whoopsie and put it in there and i may end up doing that but i want to explore all my options first make sure i don't have any uh smaller bolts although i really don't know if i do because uh yeah these are getting pretty down there for size so uh yeah let me just poke around some more and see what i can do and for the record i heard a loose piece noise in there uh i do have that metal post but it is literally just a metal post i mean i could probably put this back in there and push it in place but it's just gonna fall out again because it's not being held in there well i mean i could just do that um but i'm not sure if i want to because it was falling out and i'm looking at this side this seems a little off there possibly as well but that does tell me that it'll work once i end up going with whatever solution i decide to so it is a repairable part but i don't know if leaving that partially loose because i mean it will just probably i don't know maybe it won't pull back out maybe if i'm not using it in appropriately because i know to pull from the center maybe that will be fine i don't know let me poke around for uh different size bolts see if i can find some um if not maybe i'll just try going with that uh it retained the part before and i know to look out for it so maybe it won't be an issue all right i looked all over for uh different bolts um i could order some but honestly this really seems pretty robust here uh i'm wondering if maybe someone just bent it weirdly and it popped it out or maybe when it was being shipped to me something happened but it doesn't seem to want to come out and it's not actually all that easy to get out so i think it might be fine so i think i'm going to go go ahead and not worry about it if it becomes a problem later i can always drill and do a bolt mod on it so that won't be an issue and the spacing really is not a problem if i move the cartridge all the way over that's it there's so much space in here still for a bolt head or something so it will not even remotely be an issue if i decide to go that route uh but now i think i'm gonna go uh take this outside with an air compressor and blow it out because it really needs it i was thinking about disassembling it but there are so many bolts holding all of this down and then there's wire linkages and gears and stuff and i decided it's uh not really worth trying to take it fully apart um the bottom is clean i'm going to be doing a bit of cleaning on the top here in a moment but i don't think the bottom plastic really needs wet cleaning all that much so i'll just hit it a little bit from the outside so let me go blow this out and then uh we'll continue yeah that made a big difference uh i didn't do the ribbon quite as much because i didn't want to potentially tear that i can just wipe that off with my finger here but yeah everywhere else uh that improved it immensely especially around the uh gears and stuff but uh yeah that's all that took now for the lid it seems like it's slightly yellowed but i think that's just uh from being touched a whole bunch so i'm hoping just wiping it off here will restore it a bit um looks like some of the oil may have seeped in but it's definitely looking better so i'm just going to go ahead and wipe this off a whole bunch wow what is that um and uh see how this goes i was hoping to avoid bringing a melamine sponge into this because it always makes such a mess but it's definitely going to need that all right that is as good as this is going to get there's still a little bit of yellowing but it's really soaked into the plastic there so that's uh that's not going to come out very easily but overall this looks a lot better so i think i can start putting it back together now this didn't need too much work i just wanted to make sure that it was all looking good and correct before i uh tried to do anything with it okay so that lid goes on there first um in a really weird way so i guess that just bends onto the so plastic mean it's cost efficient that's for sure i gotta plug in the buttons so if you heard my phone ring i literally just got the extended warranty call so stupid all righty let's get these two together like that bingo okay i'll just uh get the screws back in and there we go that printer is ready to rock all right i've got it connected to power so let's watch it we're to life oh yeah all right i want to get this thing set up to demonstrate here but loading it with paper has been a huge pain for me there are no platinum knobs which sucks a lot i really hate that um on any printer like this they should just have platen knobs i don't care what crazy fun features it has it just needs that in addition to that though this printer has a really bad habit of doing full form feeds and it's kind of difficult to get it to work with that so let me go ahead and attempt to load this in here so first off most normal printers you load the paper and then you'll like clasp it onto the uh guides here but not this one you have to feed it through all right and then you pull it into place um but you have no way of going down at all there's this is not possible so you kind of just have to put it in there and then hope for the best now i'm going to press the uh paper ready button here the blue one and it's going to reset and it's going to pull i believe a whole sheet of paper through no okay it's gonna call that good well at least there's that um but from here we can do a line feed which will move it one line then the other button is form feed and that will push a whole sheet of paper through so there is that um one thing to note when you fill a uh or put paper into a printer like this i should say and you do the page reset it decides that that is the uh point on the paper in which you want to start typing so even though the paper the next sheet actually goes all the way up to here it will start printing there and it'll keep track of how many lines it is um that is probably one of the things that can be configured with the dip switches there is how long your paper is there's a standard line length for continuous feed paper like this so it is working on the assumption that it is a standard length right now so what i want to do at this point though is get the paper fed back in so i can print on this first sheet but there's no way to go back um going back on printers isn't usually that easy um because you'll get to this tear point and then these can tear and it will uh start to jam up so it's not that great so what i'm gonna do is i'm just gonna form feed the rest of this through and also try putting the lid on there see what that's like okay and then i think there's one more sheet there we are so it is a little annoying that actually went really easily having the paper pail work is i guess important uh because that made a huge difference there um so let me get one sheet fed in again now ah here's another issue okay so way back in here right there there is a brush and the head of the uh print head goes over that and it's used to clean it but it's also positioned exactly along the tear point for one side of the tractor and half of the time it starts to tear them apart and then the paper just goes through without the tractor on it so i think it just started that because i heard it i'm going to try and push it through over to the side a little bit yeah can see there it just started to separate so this thing is really not easy to load this is one of the most difficult to load uh printers i've used so yeah it's a little frustrating all right for my first test of this printer we're going to use my tandy wp2 which is a word processor that has a parallel printer output which makes it perfect for something like this what's kind of funny is i actually got this printer with a model 100 and i'm pretty sure this is what it's been used with up until now so it is kind of fitting to use it with a wp-2 instead the model 100 needs a lot of work it has a lot of bad capacitor so this is going to be getting a restoration video at some point but for now the wp2 is fully functional so we're going to work with that okay so i've got everything connected here the first thing i need to do now that these are all set up is i'm going to have it re-home the print head on there so that it knows where it is and then i'm going to create a new test document on the wp2 and from there we can actually print something so let's just go ahead and print out the name of the printer first hp oop hp link jet actually i think it's capital j one two three five c all right so i will now do a print command and alrighty well it's doing a full form feed because again it loves to do that two pages this might be the wp2 except it says it's done sending commands but all right so there we go hp think jack 22 25 c it works it printed it right in the middle of the page but uh oh well that's probably a combination of the uh wp2 here having a layout set um and the printer having its own idea of where the page start is but it will work okay i've typed out all of the standard characters on the wp2 and i'm gonna go ahead and print them on the printer now [Music] that is so fast that is really cool so the sales brochure for this thing uh i was able to find a copy of that on hp's website where they still host it actually mentions how this can print at 150 characters per second which is so quick for then uh my micro line 92 is 120 characters per second and that thing's pretty blisteringly fast but they also tout that you can print 150 characters per second in bold as well now i'm not sure how to do bold on the wp2 and it's not super easy to do but bold is usually done by double typing a character offset by one dot and an impact printer would have to strike the platen twice in order to create two prints of a character however this because it's inkjet can just print the character again or print it and then print it again without needing to strike twice it might even be able to just leave the ink dots open and just kind of smear it across so this is a super fast printer this thing was probably amazing when it first came out it is really interesting to look at the character print on here because it's not an impact printer but it's still dot based and it's just very strange they're also surprisingly uneven i feel like maybe printing a little slower so that the letters aren't as wobbly might not be a bad idea but unlike a dot matrix printer there isn't a whole lot of mass on this thing so little vibrations probably bounce the printhead around quite a lot but yeah i think these look really good can't quite tell how many dots the print is but it definitely seems to be a higher resolution uh printer like that uh the seven there that has the line at the top and then the little serif going down that's that's pretty good so yeah it's definitely an impressive printer all right now that it's all ready to go and clearly working let's try it out with a computer and i'm going to be using it with the tiny pentium because it just fits so well the printer itself is tiny in its own way so uh yeah this seems perfect to me so i'm gonna go ahead and get some paper loaded in here this is still really annoying to do and yep the tracker feed portions are pretty much just getting shredded like i was mentioning they do yeah this thing really sucks to load with tractor paper after i did some more testing i think it can actually friction feed so that's fine but you do have to load it all the way into that point to get it to work but it is doable so um i would have normally just uh set up the drivers first but i actually noticed that there is an hp thinkjet driver in here yeah think jet 2225c so uh yeah let's give that a shot uh on the printer port yeah would you like to print a test page i don't know if i've ever done this from dot matrix uh i've done it from a wheel writer but not this it's doing graphics whoa that is cool it's it is going to need to be configured because it's doing double new lines um that might be something i can change with the uh dip switches on the back i need to go look at the manual i'm going to turn this off all right the configuration here is different i need switch one to be down that is how carriage returns are interpreted so if it's up it's interpreted as a carriage return line feed that's probably because this was being used with that model 100 and it may output the escape sequences differently but now let me put this back and see how it works okay that is set i restarted the printer i'm going to print the test page again perfect that is super cool this text is rendered um and then being scaled onto here uh i'm gonna continue looking at the dip switches because i've noticed that it has some really tight margins so there may be some more to configure yet still but it's all totally legible uh this is a really high dpi dot matrix printer so this is this is really nice [Music] [Music] i can't believe i've never tried this before graphic printing on dot matrix is awesome all right i only have one more thing left to print on this and it's going to be at the end of the video so you're going to have to stick around for a moment if you want to see it but that's pretty much everything i have on the hp thinkjet 2225 being the first inkjet printer i am really surprised and impressed by it this thing rocks uh this has quickly become one of my favorite printers i now own and that's actually saying something because i have a plethora of them this thing is so tiny so cool and so capable i was not expecting the windows drivers but they are great and really show off the high resolution image capabilities so i am super happy with this thing if you enjoyed this video you may want to subscribe and if you want to support the channel i am on patreon but for now that's it and i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Tech Tangents

Views: 32,086

Rating: 4.9338398 out of 5

Keywords: HP, ThinkJet, InkJet, First, Printer, 1980s

Id: gnecsBYWhOI

Length: 28min 57sec (1737 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 03 2021