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Many moons ago, when I was in college, I was a "consultant manager" for the poor benighted students that kept the high-speed 'net access and printers in the dorms running. (This is the mid-late '90's, when Ethernet in dorm rooms was still kind of new.) I could tell more tales of Windows '95 registry hacking, battles with early versions of Novell Client32, trojan horses born from the 'nets primordial ooze, and badly designed IBM Craptiva's than this board could handle. (May the Lord damn to eternal hellfire the idiot who thought flathead screws were a good idea in a '96 Aptiva. We were issued special nutdrivers to prevent occupational injuries with those accursed machines who would often crash out of Windows, and start spewing attractive green-and-purple text-mode gibberish whenever starting Novell...)
This, however, is not one of those stories.
Back in those dark ages before portable LCD projectors were common, students had to deliver presentations using those ancient relics called "overhead projectors." There were prominent signs above every communal printer (LaserJet 4+'s) warning against the use of transparencies in the printers, due to the fact many of them were not compatible with the higher fuser temperatures in laser printers vs. copiers (or thermal transparency duplicators.) I, as one wise with the internals of those fine machines, thought I was above such petty restrictions. (I could write a print job that would cause them to display naughty messages on the status display of the printer... I could field-strip the machine to perform a transfer roller swap like a Marine pulling apart his rifle, all while the printer was bolted to the table 4" from the wall... I was that much of a geek.)
I wrote a presentation for my Senior Seminar (it was a scintillating overview of the multiple varieties of Internet Routing Protocols.) I foolishly decided to print out some transparencies, after carefully determining they were of the proper type. The wise souls that designed these transparencies however, neglected to judge their performance during a jam, where the sheet just sat upon the fuser roller, and baked. Naturally, my presentation jammed. And which part of the transparency was still inside the printer when it turned into stinky molten plastic you might ask? Yes, the part with my name on it. Which part of the printer was not accessible for extraction without unlocking and unbolting the printer from the table? Yes, the fuser assembly.
Luckily, when transparencies cool down, they turn back into something vaguely resembling their original form, after which they can be extracted with the very careful application of needlenose pliers and the manual turning of the fuser rollers.
Let this be a lesson to those who would ignore big yellow warning signs and stikcers... sometimes they aren't kidding.
SirWired
This, however, is not one of those stories.
Back in those dark ages before portable LCD projectors were common, students had to deliver presentations using those ancient relics called "overhead projectors." There were prominent signs above every communal printer (LaserJet 4+'s) warning against the use of transparencies in the printers, due to the fact many of them were not compatible with the higher fuser temperatures in laser printers vs. copiers (or thermal transparency duplicators.) I, as one wise with the internals of those fine machines, thought I was above such petty restrictions. (I could write a print job that would cause them to display naughty messages on the status display of the printer... I could field-strip the machine to perform a transfer roller swap like a Marine pulling apart his rifle, all while the printer was bolted to the table 4" from the wall... I was that much of a geek.)
I wrote a presentation for my Senior Seminar (it was a scintillating overview of the multiple varieties of Internet Routing Protocols.) I foolishly decided to print out some transparencies, after carefully determining they were of the proper type. The wise souls that designed these transparencies however, neglected to judge their performance during a jam, where the sheet just sat upon the fuser roller, and baked. Naturally, my presentation jammed. And which part of the transparency was still inside the printer when it turned into stinky molten plastic you might ask? Yes, the part with my name on it. Which part of the printer was not accessible for extraction without unlocking and unbolting the printer from the table? Yes, the fuser assembly.
Luckily, when transparencies cool down, they turn back into something vaguely resembling their original form, after which they can be extracted with the very careful application of needlenose pliers and the manual turning of the fuser rollers.
Let this be a lesson to those who would ignore big yellow warning signs and stikcers... sometimes they aren't kidding.
SirWired
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