HP LaserJet 4P printer (1993)

An (almost) perfect-working example of one of the most legendary series of computer printers ever made.

[@JHollidayB]

Loved my -4P in 1993! Ran without stop or a single issue daily for 5+ years.

[@cjs46and2]

Printed over 200 of our wedding invites, envelopes, response cards, and return envelopes on ours almost 20 years ago. Everything turned out beautiful. I still have it and it worked last I knew, maybe 6 years ago. I just don't have anything with a parallel port anymore. Oh we have also gone through 6 inkjets in that same amount of time we've had the 4P.

[@rodhoutx]

The 2, 3, and 4 Series were definitely great printers! We had them at work in the 80's-90's and they just went forever - the small printers and the big printers. We used the font cartridges too. We had Word Perfect for DOS back then, so to get the Letter Gothic font we had to buy the font cartridge and install another piece into Word Perfect. When Windows 3.x came along with more fonts and Adobe Type Manager that eliminated the need for font cartridges (but was much slower to print since it had to send down the font data or print it as graphics versus just sending down the characters). What's interesting is these were pretty low-resolution printers (300, 600 dpi) compared to today, but due to that the text and graphics were really bold and dark!

[@themegaman91965]

Ah yes, that printer. I used that from the 1990's all the way up to 2011. Super, super reliable, and honestly printed fast enough for me. Paper jams were also so easy to fix, and it'd start printing again in a jiffy. To think I used that as a network printer on a Windows 7 machine. Kind of disappointed dad threw it out when he did, like everything else. It's still much better than any other printer I've used. I never have to hit some silly "wake" button. It was on, or off. When I'd print, I had no paper sticking out to worry about, like I sadly do with the Samsung Xpress I use now. He should've just gave the doggone thing to me, instead of throwing it out...

[@TailsFurse]

I had one of these printers, Haha! What a work horse! I once printed a home made story of about 300 pages, and I almost got it to print continuously all the 300, except that I ran out of paper somewhere close to the end and had to refill it. Mine made a very interesting Very loud old hard drive sound, that spun up quick and had a slow spool down time. Still don't know what that was, and from listening to yours it does it too, although A LOT quieter than mine. I too experienced the the flashing lights in the house while printing, so awesome! By the way, the smearing is being caused by some mirror thing inside the printer. Open the lid to access the toner, Take out the cartridge, now look at the door, See that green thing hanging from up there? Its velcro'd on, peel it off and lay it with the brush pointing up ontop of that lip with the black piece on it. It should lay on fairly nice. Now run it back and forth, left to right for a little while. There is a mirror up there I think that gets dirty. Clean it and you will be back in business! Toner based printers are amazing!

[@themaritimegirl]

+Tails Furse Nice. At 4 ppm, it would have taken an hour and 15 minutes to print 300 pages! The noise is the scanning mirror (which you mention in your second paragraph), a hexagon-shaped mirror that spins at high speed that the laser bounces off of and onto the toner drum. It's powered by a polyphase AC motor, indeed similar to the type of motor hard drives use. The smearing actually was the toner cartridge. A rubber wiper inside the cartridge whose purpose is to clean the drum after printing degrades over time and fails. I replaced the cartridge, and it prints beautifully now.

[@gszikora2000]

Great video. I am impressed of the quality of the print that machine could do for 1993. I remember going to Radio Shack in 1994 to buy my Canon Bubble Jet 10SX, and still seeing allot of 24 pin dot matrix printers for sale.

[@chrisgralapp2303]

Mine is from January 1994, and has about 10,000 pages on the meter--I LOVE it, and just bought a new HP cartridge for it. The off brands are junk, stick with HP. I paid about $80 for the cartridge--so thankful they are still made! It's now 28 years old, and will probably outlive me! Lasers are so much more economical thank injects. I heard someone say that Epson ink in the teeny cartridges costs the equivalent of about $4000 per gallon!

[@BSquared1000]

My wife and I each have a 4P. They work fine with Windows 10. The setup sequence is to hook up the printer to the computer with both turned off, turn on the printer, and then turn on the computer. Win 10 does the installation without any problem. The printer-to-USB cables that we bought also work great. They aren't "clumsy" at all, as one person says in this thread. Bought them at Amazon. I picked up a third 4P that someone left at the curb. It doesn't work, but I plan to use it for parts; for example, the hinges on the lid of my printer are broken. The printer still works, but if someday it stops, I'll swap shells. There's a KZbin video that shows how to do that.

[@themaritimegirl]

Awesome. This unit is still working great, and after I finally bought a new toner cartridge, it's my main printer now. I've printed almost 300 pages on it!

[@JIMO415]

Hey "themaratimeman" this just helped me out...THANKS. My job disposed of this printer 10 to 12 years ago so I got it for free along with 2 new in box toner cartridges. I did not get the operators manual. It has worked great for me for several years now, on and off. I do notuse it much. I always wondered if sitting was bad for this thing. It seems to be a bullet proof unit, every time I turned it on, it worked. The job got rid of it because it started to have problems with high print demands. I never figured I would push it near what they did, so I thought it would be good for me, especially since it was free! The print quality started to slip last year. The black smudging. Before opening the New HP cartridge I had, it felt better seeing in the comments that that had fixed yours. The new cartridge did it! Like you, I also have been using this printer with a Lenovo lap top with the serial to USB cable. I recently upgraded to Windows 7 since XP is not going to be supported anymore. 8 and 10 are used now I guess.... oh well. Thanks again, Jim

[@accwowunu4245]

Great value. Great looks.

[@vwestlife]

The streaking is usually caused by the toner cartridge, but you can do a "half test" to make sure. To do a half test, put a sheet of paper in the manual feeder and do a self test. When the back edge of the paper is almost all the way in, open the toner door to stop the printing before the paper gets to the fuser. Remove the toner cartridge and look at the unfused image on the paper. If the streaks are visible, the problem is the toner. If the image on the paper is OK, then it is the fuser.

[@themaritimegirl]

I'll try that when I get the chance; thanks. I assume the manual feeder is what I used to test the "envelope"? For some reason I never thought that you could feed full-size paper through it.

[@vwestlife]

***** Yes, the manual feed slot is the same thing as the envelope slot.

[@themaritimegirl]

vwestlife Well, the problem is the toner cartridge. I also noticed that if I clean the green roller on the cartridge, and then spin the roller, the middle part of it becomes stained with toner again. I see I can get a genuine HP 74A for pretty cheaply on eBay, so I'll probably grab one.

[@kapral_jedziniak]

I have this printer since 1995, it still works properly for 25 years! , now it works as the second one, I use it for moisture-proofing prints (the other is a color inkjet).

[@ringoooringooo2190]

That paper indicator is genius !

[@bullshark3000]

i bought one in 1995, I think i paid close to $800 for it then but its still working fine today! I used it for printing all through college and I have only needed to change the printer cartridge 3 times since then... granted I dont do much printing at home since college but its still working fine!

[@Knockeye]

You so passionate for printers its awesome :)

[@SGSOnlineTV]

First youre right! Really awesome Printer. I have a 4P / 4MP first it did its Job in our company now its working at home, and it is still working like on its first day in 1993, undestroyable. Some things i found out, possibly its helpful: - The Curling is the only sad thing about this printer, its absolutely normal, but if you print more then one page and put them into a binder and squeeze them a little it will fix it. - The black stuff on the printings is deffinitly because of the toner, change it clean it and it will be alright. - Dont buy the original HP toner, much too expenisve, there are really good third party alternatives - If your PC dont has Printer Port/Seriel anymore there are little printer servers you can buy for only a few bucks and they will make this printer Wifi capable - This printer has sometimes problems with complex .pdf documents, some layers will not be printed correctly, you can tell "Adobe Reader" to print the document as a picture or just make a screenshot of it, this is a work around Hopefully I could help someone, sorry for my english, i´m not a native ;)

[@themaritimegirl]

+SGSOnlineTV Genuine HP cartridges are really cheap if you get new-old stock ones on eBay. I got one for $15. The cartridge dates from 2010, and works perfect.

[@digitalarcheologist7586]

How much are they worth today? I still have mine since I purchased it new in 1993. I stopped using it in 2001. It’s in great condition. I remember how awesome it was ... what a work horse!

[@LauraLWC3001]

We have one of these and it still works fine. Unfortunately, our Windows computers can't find this machine on our home network. It only works with Windows computers of they are directly connected. Our Macs have NO problems finding them on the network as long as the host CPU is turned on. Quality of print is much better than other laser printers we've owned over the years.

[@eduardtibet]

BTW, it is not "USB and serial # but rather "US and serial #". I have the same printer made in Europe (Netherlands) and its serial started from NL, that means 2 digits ISO country code. Another fact for this printer: Beginning from this model HP became to do an onsite assembling of printers on different production sites (US, NL, etc.) based on "large blocks assembly" idea.

[@stonent6755]

We have a 4100 or 4150 at work that reportedly has 1.5 million pages on it. But we have a service company do maintenance on our printers so it could have had some parts replaced.

[@bevorules77]

My dad bought an HP 4MP at a used computer sale for $50 in 1996. I used it during college, then my dad used it until it finally gave up the ghost around 2012.

[@jacobshin4279]

I have this old relic. How might I obtain toner cheaply for this printer?

[@marcvillanova5111]

Have a perfectly working one on my desk at work. Just printed two dozen pages of Powerpoint slides on it.

[@Lachlant1984]

My high school has 2 HP LaserJet printers in the computer centre, one was a LaserJet 4, the other one I think was a LaserJet 5P if I'm not mistaken. The LaserJet 5P didn't have a digital readout on it from memory, just a few status lights on the top panel, I think the LaserJet 4 was eventually replaced by a Kyocera printer of some type, I don't know what the model number was.

[@themaritimegirl]

Yes, the 5P just has the one button and a few lights, similar to the 4L. We had a 5P in my elementary school, and I'll never forget what it sounded like when it printed. (Well, I wouldn't anyway because there's a video of one on KZbin. lol)

[@Lachlant1984]

***** I don't recall our LaserJet 5P making any particularly memorable sounds when printing, Laser printers are generally very quiet when printing, I like that, though I don't actually have a printer here. I love the noise my old (1992) Canon StarWriter 85 makes when it's printing. Our school also had lots and lots of Canon BJC-255SP printers, they made a somewhat memorable sound when printing too, as did some of the Epson Stylus printers. I remember when turning on a computer that had a BJC-255SP connected to it, the printer would beep.

[@AmazingArends]

I had a 4MP that I got new and it worked fine but of course it had the old style parallel and serial ports meaning it won't work with modern computers without a clumsy adapter. It got obsolete before it wore out.

[@afwvenus5801]

I am from Indonesia and I really want to buy this printer. how to buy it

[@stonent6755]

Lj4 series used fast page mode ram. I used some from an old dell pentium to upgrade one.

[@StRoRo]

Ahh memories.

[@gidaniels8386]

I have this printer and it was great. Now it will not power on. Any ideas on what to do. I have checked and re-checked, unplugging and re-plugging.

[@themaritimegirl]

That's a common problem on these. The main circuit board is connected to several daughterboards, and over time the connections to the daughterboards can degrade and cause it to stop working. The fix is to disassemble the printer (you can find the service manual online) and reseat the connections to the daughterboards.

[@MateenK]

Interesting video Trent. As for the RAM which was only 2 MB, would it still be able to print large reports for school?

[@themaritimegirl]

Yeah. The Windows print queue just sends data to the printer as it can fit it. Technically a printer doesn't need memory at all.

[@ClassicGarth]

I used to run out of memory on an Apple Laserwriter printer -- the computer sent Postscript to the printer which had to have enough memory to render it.

[@jsjoe66]

My HP Laserjet 4P lcd panel is showing a blinking #50 with message "Service". How do I troubleshoot this? Joe J.

[@themaritimegirl]

Fuser's burned out. (For future reference, if you googled the error message, as I did to answer this, you would have learned that immediately.) You can get a new fuser assembly for $60 from brokenprinter dot com. You'll have to download the 4L/4P service manual to see how to take it apart and replace the assembly.

[@4444Namo]

Any idea how to get THE cartridge to work? YES I KNOW to shake and remove the tape, We have the 1993 HP LaserJet 4MP. I have bought 2 cartridges online. One was in the original HP packaging. the other was not, but does not look like it was altered. Just less packaging as they tried to send me a cartridge that would work before APRIL 15. NO LUCK. Mine is connected to a Mac Quardra 605. I have used it for business for 20 plus years. Ran out of my previous toners.

[@themaritimegirl]

Debbie Oman Is the printer printing and not producing anything on paper, or is it refusing to print at all? In either case, if the cartridges are new, then it's probably a problem with the printer itself (or the computer), rather than the cartridge.

[@4444Namo]

***** , we actually found a store in our area with ink that works. Not as DARK as I want, but it works. this was refurbished.

[@woodss82]

Oh the laserjet 4P machines are gone to the tooth, were good machines in the 90s but parts for them is hard to get.

[@themaritimegirl]

I find the opposite - all but a few parts are still easy and inexpensive to get.

[@woodss82]

+themaritimeman they are quite reliable, I haven't seen one in that condition in a long time, bought back memories, but there is much faster and better LaserJets now, but they wouldn't last as long as the IIP, IIIP and 4P, 5P and 6P actually the 6P is much better than the 4P, similar engine, but the 6P is 8ppm when the 4P is a only 4PPM but you can network these machines with a parallel JetDirect and share the machine, but with the 4P being so slow, why bother, it would not be practical in a office, my current monochrome LaserJet is a 4300 and that is a 45ppm monster, but its twice the size requires a lot of room, but the 4P is small enough to be actually a portable laser printer and that is what the 4P would only be good for.

[@Bluethunderboom]

That's interesting! =) Although it is sad that some of the Companies like Lexmark, HP, etc. that some of the old printers that they're no longer to continue to manufacture the ink for the printer, and that would be cool that we could refill the old cartridge and toner, and I'm not sure if they have one on online or at the store. I have one like Lexmark Deskjet Printer Model Z32, when I got them to test them out, I noticed that the Ink Cartridge is dry and empty, and I said to my self, "I need to have a new Ink Cartridge," instead of that, I can do is to refill the ink on the Ink Cartridge. Luckily, Lexmark Z32 Printer works fine, it never been use, and it works for every other compatible like Windows, but what it needs to have install the printer with Macintosh, it needs to have a software to install the printer in order to have work by printing the documents.

[@ClassicGarth]

PC LOAD LETTER

[@mark00159]

If we printed that slow nowadays, you could go take a shower, just to wait for it to stop printing

[@JayarFlores]

Funnything I Still have one and use it all the time, great printer

[@benburns1180]

"Warming Up" 😂😂😂

[@chrissmith1521]

I have a memory stick in mine. I must have bought it online. I think I have the manual.

[@realgroovy24]

New printers are not built as good as the old ones!

[@themaritimegirl]

True that. I don't know about their laser printers, but I can speak from experience that HP's last really good inkjet printers were made in the early 2000s.

[@realgroovy24]

***** I really want one of these laser printers I better look out for one! I'd much prefer it over any new printer infact I'd probably throw away my current modern laser printer once that dies to get an older model such as that one!

[@cameriqueTV]

Dug mine out, it printed ok one time, then after that makes a loud buzzing noise.

[@AdamBluntExtra]

300w is nothing my printer (konica minolta magicolor 7300) can take up to 1400w according to the datasheet but it's a huge printer not only is it a colour printer but it also can print on a3 size paper

[@realgroovy24]

why would one want their printer to have a higher wattage anyway? my PC has a 320W power supply yet a new one would use at least 500W

[@cambridgeport90]

Those things were very expensive back then weren't they?

[@themaritimegirl]

Yep. The retail price of the 4P was $1229. Which wasn't bad as far as Laser printers went back in the day. The DeskJet 550C, HP's entry-level color inkjet printer of the time, was $719.

[@warrenmacdonald1372]

You may already have the answers to the questions you posed in your excellent video, but I'll have a go anyway. I have a 4P and I installed 3 X 4Mb sticks in it. Here is a url that might help you with proper installation in a 4P www.hpprintermemory.com/hp_flash_simm_laserjet4p.html The curling Is usually paper-related. If the paper has been sitting in an open,package in high humidity, IT WILL CURL. Sometimes on the ends of paper packaging there is a notation saying "print this side up", or an arrow indicating the same thing If not, try turning the paper over if you can. It has something to do with the way the paper's grain is oriented. That funny "whooshing" sound, as you put it only appears when certain brands of paper are used on my m/c and it seems to be fuser area related, but it hasn't caused any problems yet. I'm actually envious you got this printer for $10 as I paid $1,595 in March of '94!

[@themaritimegirl]

Thanks for all the info! You're right - both the curling paper and the weird noise were with the particular paper I was using. Since buying a new toner cartridge for this printer, I use it regularly and it performs just perfectly.

[@cbart1987]

HP 98A Black Toner Cartridge ( (92298A) does HP LJ 4,5 SERIES mine works great with USB adaptor