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The Content of a File: A Cautionary Tale of Buying an Old Printer

I must confess that I recently made a grave mistake. While browsing online, I have bought a Canon inkjet printer from 25 years ago. Not just any ordinary inkjet printer, mind you, but a vintage model that has been sitting idle for decades.

As I delved into the world of printing again, I was faced with a stark reality. The cost of replacing the old cartridges with new ones seemed astronomical. However, it is this very realization that prompts me to share my experience with others who may be contemplating making a similar purchase.

The Old and the New

My Canon inkjet printer from 25 years ago has been a faithful companion in the past, faithfully churning out print after print. But as time has passed, its reliability has begun to wane. The once-vibrant colors have faded, and the paper jams with alarming frequency. Despite this, I was drawn to the idea of reviving an old friend.

In hindsight, I should have done my research better. A quick online search would have revealed the high cost of replacing the cartridges, not to mention the environmental impact of manufacturing new ones. Alas, it was too late. The ink has already run dry, and the printer is now sitting idle once more.

A Lesson Learned

As I reflect on my experience, I am reminded of the importance of considering the consequences of our actions. In this case, buying an old printer without doing due diligence led to a significant financial burden. It also raises questions about waste management and sustainability.

For those who may be tempted by the allure of buying a vintage printer at a bargain price, I urge you to exercise caution. While it is understandable to want to reduce our environmental footprint, it is equally important to consider the potential costs and practicalities involved.

In conclusion, my experience serves as a reminder to always weigh the pros and cons before making a purchase. Whether it's a printer or any other item, we must be mindful of the potential consequences of our actions.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- Greetings, uhI might have just made a huge mistake!I've bought an inkjet printer.Not just any inkjet,a Canon inkjet from 25 years ago.\"Small size. Big printing performance.\"Just what you wantin your BJC-2000 ColorBubble Jet Printer from 1999.Yeah, this is like I said,a quarter century old.It's silly to even buy acolor ink jet printer nowadaysbecause it's pretty much aripoff, especially with ink.But to get one from the late '90s,I don't know what I was thinking.I just kinda can't help myself.I see the \"right\" type oflisting on eBay sometimesand just like, yeah, it's in the box.Supposedly it worked or it'sin decent-ish condition.The seller had never used it, at least.I don't know if I'd call it new,but decently intact inside.I mean, I really just wantedto grab something like thisto have something to pairwith my desktop computersof the time period.I have a lot of late '90s machines,I do retrospectives on thoseand I sometimes justwant a fitting printerto go alongside of it.Well, I have a lot of dot matrix printersand I have thermal printersand I even have some other inkjets,but they're either toonew and don't look rightwith older systems or USB onlyand I want parallel orsomething's just broken and stupidbecause they're printers.And you know, I don't expect thisto be a great one.In fact, it seems like it probably isn'tfrom what I've looked up really briefly,but I was trying to see if \"Bubble Jet\"is any different than \"inkjet\"or if it's just some Canontrademarked version of inkjet,and that kind of seemslike that's what it is.But some other conflictinginformation onlineand said, oh no, it is different.And it led me to thisvideo on YouTube from 2003.That is just a delight.It is so oddly narrated.It's like The G-Man from Half-Lifeis talking about color printing.Take a listen to some of this.- \"New BubbleJet printer technologyaims for the ideal combinationof digital photo printing capabilities.Enhanced photo image qualityand high speed printing performance.Precise, smooth and naturalrealistic photo image quality.Canon's new micro-fined droplet technologypositions the heaters directlyabove the ink ejection opening.\"- I've heard some oddsounding tech video narrationsbut that's a special one.Anyway, a bit of a gemthere on YouTube.Yeah, let's just see a little bit moreabout this real quick,dive into some context.For that kind of thing,I always start with some Google Books hereand there's a scan of \"PCMagazine\" November 2nd, 1999.They have a personalprinters review shootoutwith all kinds of differentoptions for different things.And the BJC-2000 is all theway down there.At the low speed, low quality end.You know, you gotsomething like the BJC-6000with its individual ink tanksand higher quality, bleh.And then we just keep on going,eventually we'll get to ourpiece of crap BJ variant.BJC-2000 is $70.Text quality was excellent.Photo quality, good.Overall speed, poor, theygive it a D reliability grade.Well, at least it's not thevery worst, the BJC-1000.Here we go,\"BJC 1000 and 2000 offervirtually identical setupand driversbut the printers use different cartridges.Both offer a choice among standard photoand neon fluorescent inks.\"I had never heard of that.And yeah, I looked thatup real quick, too,and apparently fluorescentinks were a thing.And maybe they still are, I don't know.But black light affectedinks you just print out,it's pretty cool.Remember those like, velvetyfelt blacklight postersyou'd get at Spencer's or whatever?I used to love those.Anyway, \"It comes with Canon Creative.\"Another reason I wanted to grab this,not 'cause of that, specifically,but I did have a version of thatand our computer we got in late 1997.It was a Canon BJC...I wanna say it was a 4300 maybe.This kind of reminded meof like a cheaper version of that.Which on that note,the ink cartridges for thiswere $22 for one color oneand $8.25 for a black one.And you get about 44 pages per cartridge,like 50 cents per page. Yeesh.Then basically double that for inflation.But this right here is another reasonI wanted to pick this up.Canon also sells a scanningcartridge option for $19to let the BJC-2000 inparticular double as a scanner.Something that they domention right here on there.\"Instantly becomes acolor sheetfed scanner\"with the optional IS-22color image cartridge.And you know what?I had to!So yeah, this ink cartridge...It's not an ink cartridge,it's a scanner cartridge.And it basically...Yeah it just goes, instead of doing ink,it's looking at whateveryou run through itand then scanning one page at a time.Which very much remindsme of the ImageWriter IIfrom Apple back in the day.It was a dot matrix printerand you could grab theThunderscan module for that.And I have that stuff, too.I just haven't gotten aroundto setting that up yet.I'll probably make that an Oddware videocuz that seems even moreunusual to have that in the '80s.And another, really kindof the final reasonI wanted to grab this is becauseyou can still get the ink cartridges,the BCI-21s very easily.And I just grabbed these on,I think it was just Amazon.They were just readily availablein all kinds of places,but that seemed to be theeasiest and pretty affordable.And yeah, BCI-21.It's the same type of cartridgethat my old Canon used in 1997, 98.I also found this amusing!The press reviews weren't exactly glowing,but my goodness, the customer reviews,they're pretty much all negative.So this person in April of 2000 said that\"a 100% rebate would not suffice,\"the worst printer they've ever seen.So we're gonna open this up.Try to set it up and see if it works.It actually has someoriginal cartridges in here.And that brings back memories,those exact stickers.No way, I forgot about this.Yeah, the ink cartridges holder.That's nuts.We had this on ourdesk from like late 1997to probably 2007.Some trays.Sealed user's manual.There's a lot of unusedlooking stuff in here.Got a power cable.\"Extend your Canon service.\"For all that's worth.And there we go, Canon Creative Home.Look at that.Here's how to quick start the printer.Plug it in and do stuff.I don't know if this isparallel or USB.I don't remember.I'm pretty sure it'd haveto be parallel, right?We've got Windows 3.1 drivers.Yeah, that does not look used.Wow, so there's the parallel.Have to go grab one of those cablesfrom the dungeon of cable storage.But yeah, check that out.That is a compact little thing, indeed.Might be a piece of junk but...feels special right now.Nice.Yeah.Well, isn't that just adelightful '90s thing?Speaking purely aesthetically, of course.You know what?I'm gonna try the originalsjust to see if somehow they hold up.That would be incredible if they do.Plus I think we have to get the little...Yeah, the little storagecradle anyway outta here.Oh-ho-ho-hoo!Shouldn't have smelled that!Hoo, that's gonna giveme a bit of a head rush.Oh my goodness.The air, the aroma is extremely pungent.So I mean that still looks very inky.Eh, it might be alright, letme double check the manual.Put it in there, na-nuh-nah...\"And press the blue lock lever down.\"I remember there being a little...Oh, I bet that's in the...Hm!...Sure.Well, alright.I am going to go andfind a cable really quickand get it plugged intoa Windows 95 or 98 PC.I don't know, we'll try 95 first.See how that goes!I'm oddly excited fora 25-year-old inkjet.Alright! That is a good sign.\"Congratulations onpurchasing your printer.\"\"It only took you 25 years to install this.\"All right!Taking bets right now tosee if this actually works.Test page.Alright, so it says cartridgeis not in there correctly.I mean...Is there more to this?Is there some other part we're missing?\"A BJ cartridge error has occurred.Install it properly andclose the front cover.\"Well, that tells me nothing.\"Install it properly.\"I mean there are otherparts in here, right?But it didn't...It doesn't say anywherethat I can find where to put these things.Yeah, it straight up doesn't say anythingabout putting these extra pieces in there.Yeah, there's like springsand thangs poppin' outta here.Oh, what the heck?I can see what's supposed to be happening,but this piece won't go in there.It's supposed to like gointo a point and then snap.It looks like it just...Yeah, it's not going in far enough at all.Like there's not enoughspace or something.This spring.Like it gets in there,sometimes it'll hold,but it'll just, yeah, popright through like that.So I can't get the pressureto both get that on thereand then get this on top of it.I went through the service manual.It is not mentioned at all in here.So I think maybe this is likesomething was wrong from the factory.Maybe this is a refurb orreturn unit or something.But here's the issue,this little piece withnothing else in place,it will snap in there.But you see how easy it comes off?It'll hold in place with thisbut it's not getting any pressure.It's not really bringing ittogether when you add the springthat it needs to pull everything together.It just does not hold in place at all.The hole is too wornor like this part is justnot holding in place.I don't know, something is offby just the tiniest little bit.Yeah, it doesn't matterwhat I do to the spring.This piece is not gonna hold in place.It's too flimsy.And yeah, I have looked it upto see if there is a a 3Dprintable version of this.I would just try that but no,haven't found that at all.Haven't found reallyanything for this BJC-2000or related printers.And I don't have the skillsor the will to do it myself.Yeah, every time, samestupid error message.Which doesn't actuallysay what the error is.\"A problem has occurred,unplug it, plug it back in.If not, send it to Canon.\"I should......in a big bag of !What?Well it actually startedpulling in paper that timeand now it says an error again.What is it?I wish it would tell me.I'm trying one of these new carts.I don't even know.Wha-what? What?No, don't do that!Take that out there, I don't even know.It's doing it again.It doesn't think it's closed but it is.So basically I just starttweaking this little spring.For whatever reason...That'll do it.Nah it just says generic error.That doesn't mean anything.\"Service call required.\"I wanted an authentic'90s printer experience.I guess I got it.You know, I don't knowwhat I expected.Anyway, so this is likethree weeks later.Things have happened since then.I kind of got desperateand actually ordered another one of these.Well not this one, a BJC-4000,which is compatible withthe same ink cartridges.And guess what?The problem inside isexactly the same on that one.I didn't record it becausehonestly it was so frustrating.It appeared just like a couple days later.After recording the last sectionsand I was just honestly pissed off.So I threw that in the trash.About to throw this in the trash,or at least salvage it for parts.And I did an even stupider thing.I bought another one for some reason.You know what?This is literally thedefinition of insanity, I think.In terms of doing thesame crap over and overand expecting or hopingfor a different result.But this one was \"tested working.\"Ehh!I do know that it at least receives powerbut that's it.So yeah, if the past twoBJC printers in the seriesare any indication,that problem is pretty annoyingly normalwith this lever not holding in placedue to that black piece of plasticbeing pushed out by the spring.This appears to be intactin this one for the moment.Yeah, it feels loose.It feels like it could pop off at any timebut for the moment it's holding in placeand it's already got its cradle in there.I just need to hopefully justswap out those ink carts.These are the new old stock onesthat the other one came with.That I don't even knowif they're good or notbut we'll see.See, this is what theother one wasn't doing.I mean it was doing it sometimeswhen I cranked it in place,but we'll see if this actuallydoes what it's supposed to.It at least goes in thespot that it's supposed to.So it is detected in Windows 95but so is the other one.So, at least it's not throwing up any errors.Let's just do \"test print.\"Yes, start printing.What was that?It didn't put up any errors that timebut it also didn't print anything.Well perhaps the nozzles are just gross.So let's try the head cleaning.I don't know what that didbut let's just print a test file here.Some plain text.Yeah, it must just be gunked up or dirtyor the carts just don't have ink in 'em.I mean, it's still pretty inky, you know.Maybe we can try it in just black.Nah, nothing at all.Alright, let's just try theseactual newly-manufactured ones.See how that goes.If not, I guess I'll just have to tryand take that outta therewithout it breaking.Straight up nothing.Just gotta be a dirty head, right?Don't want to do this...I feel like I'm taking theplutonium out of the DeLorean.Okay, that doesn't look... great.Yeah, look at that.All this gunk and just...Mm-hmm.Huh, okay.Nozzle check pattern.Nothing.It could just be like thelittle pads themselvesthat soak up the ink inside there.And I think if you add a littlebit of water or something...I'll look it up real quick.But I think you can re moisturize.I remember doing these kindof things back in the day,especially years later, you know,after having the printerfor however long we had itand stuff gets gunked upand dries out and all that.You don't use it for a while.Hey, there is a littlebit of something there.A little bit of something,just a little bit.I bet if we just let itprint a whole big page.It's just these little bits of ink.'Cause if we can justget the ink flowing outof these cartridges,I think we'd be alright.It's wanting to print.Despite its nature of...being junk.All right, just using water.Ooh, yeah, oh my goodness.All kinds of dry ink.Yeah, all right.That's clean. Much as I can, anyway,without completely soaking the inside.It could be dried up inside, too.There's that littlewell that it goes into.So if this doesn't work, I do somewhere...Yeah.This was from the onethat was new-looking.Maybe this has never beenused, I don't think it has.Nope.So let's try this other magazineor whatever you call it.This ink holster.Oh man, nah, nothing.So that is with the newone of these thingies.And the actual new ink cartridges,newly manufactured anyway.Which should be the best case scenarioand it's just not doing anything.We've removed all obstacles.There's nothing down the bottom of there.This is it, this is the whole thing.It's definitely really inky though, right?It's possible that this onethat looked new, actually was,and like I said, becauseit was missing those parts,it seems like it was perhaps a refurbor something that got returned'cause it wasn't workingand then just put in inhis box for, you know,20 years and then soldto some sucker YouTuberon eBay decades later.I'm just gonna let this runthrough a bunch of tests.This is just a full color,full page bitmap.Just dumping ink through there.So it's either gonna clog like crazyor it's eventually gonna come through.Kind of a hail Mary ora hail Satan.Oh, little signs of life, inky life.Yeah, like little bits of blue.This right here is whatI'm printing, by the way,or attempting to.It could be that only the blueportion of this is uncloggedand you kind of see in therethere's like three little pads.One for each of the color andthen one over here for black.All right, well we're getting some magentacoming through there.So we have blue andmagenta or sign of magenta.The yellow, I guess, isn'tcoming through at all.Maybe the black as well'cause this is supposedto be kind of spottedwith a black texture.Again, compared to this image here.Even if I do get it fixed,this feels so flimsy andlike prone to breaking,failing, dying at any time.Would it even be worth getting to work?Because the idea is that I could geta nice little printerset up for '90s machinesto leave it set up with themand use them in different videos.But I wouldn't even want to use thiseven if it did work all the time.So I don't know what I'm doing.If anybody has a recommendationof like,I guess a laser printer from the '90swith a nice '90s beige aestheticthat's not an Apple one.And you can actuallyget toner for it still.In color, preferably,it's gotta be in color'cause I have black and white printers.A color laser from the '90syou can still get supplies for,I don't know if that exists.Yellow is certainly not dry.I mean it's gettingmy fingers yellow.I mean all these are,you know they're moist.Yeah, just not getting anyyellow, not getting any black.Yellow could understand.But the black...Nah that one's new and thatis like flowing with ink.So yeah, this is what the same cartridgesbut the other holder againjust to make sure and...Look at this.Hard to see but there isthe faintest of yellowcoming through on that one.Just the faintest.So ink is coming outta the cartridge.It's straight up thisthing that is the problem.The BCI or the BC-21E.I mean I could like.I could try to find another one.By the way, Bird Feed LGR live streamis going each day overon the LGR Birds channeland now features a nestcam and we've got a robin.She just laid a blue egg.Anyway, I was gonna sayis even if I were toget new old stock onesand there are plenty,they all come pre-installedwith ink cartridgesalready in them.I mean you saw how itwas in the printer box.New old stock, this is justhow they were from the factory.They had ink in them.I haven't actually seen a new old stockor unused just the the black magazinethe holder part on its own.They all have ink in there already,which means they'reprobably gonna be sufferingfrom the same issue of dried up ink.Like, here's one but,you know, it's been used,who knows if it actually works.Do I want to spend $36 on this thingthat may or may not have theexact same issue as mine?- The answer to that is heck no.So I'm here in the 3D printer room'cause it's alreadysmelling like fumes anyway.And I'm going to try thisold technique I found online.I was just soaking it inisopropyl alcohol overnight.I got nothing to lose at this point.All right.Let's see what that does.I don't know.I don't know, who cares?All right, a couple days laterI just let them go overnightand then kind of forgot about 'em.That's what they've been dryingoff for another overnight.But anyway, they are about as cleaned outas I think they're going to get.Let's try the slightlybetter condition one first.I'm seeing blue againAnd yeah sign of magenta.Same exact result as before.No black, no yellow.It's mostly the black that's concerning.I will try this other color cartridge herejust to be sure, but...And this is the oneI think we were onlygetting yellow out of.Yeah, exact same resultsor lack of results.I'm gonna go aheadand say this one's pretty muchjust too gunked up to save.I mean, you know,I'll crack that one open justto see what's inside but...Eh, this is both new inks here so...We get even less color now.Well now I just don't know.Like maybe these new ones are bad.Okay, these are the old ones.Yeah, you can see theindividual holes therefor black and your three colors.Oh, are you kidding me?Ah?Wow.All right, I mean we'restill not getting yellowbut there's plenty of ink in them.This is the black that wasn't working.And this other one is now.I am so confused and really annoyedand kind of fed up withit at this point.It is...You probably can't see itbut it's very clearly wetwith yellow ink there.It is going through,it is just getting likeclogged at this point.Well if we can't printanything, can we scan anything?Alright, I got some softwareto archive if needed.IS-22.Same general type of dealas this here except obviously no ink.But yeah, same connectionbut instead of an ink printer headwe've got a little scanner.Put it in there, lock it down.Oh, \"Slide the paper thicknesslever to the center.\"All right.Let's see what we got.So do we just like jam stuff in here?How do we do this?This seems weird.\"Place the image you wish toscan in the scanning holder.\"What is that?Oh, I missed this.There's a bunch of otherstuff in here.Yeah, 'cause all I saw in there was this.I just thought it was packagingbut yeah, we got some more paperwork.Okay, here is the sleeveand I guess this is a calibration sheet.It doesn't tell me if it'sdoing anything properlyor not over there.It's once again just greatfeedback from the software.So on the manual it saysto use this plastic sheetevery time you scan anythingand to not scan anything without it.And if you wanna scan larger piecesthen you can buy optionalscanning sleeves.That kind of limitswhat you can scan here.So I'm just trying to findsomething that would even fit.'Cause even this is too big.Okay, yeah, here we go.How about the Linuxversion of SimCity 3000.That's bizarre.Feels like it's printing but it's not.Oh great, \"Cannotcommunicate with scanner.\"\"Check status scannerdriver will be closed.\"Why did it say that?Of course this isn'tgonna work either, right?I hate everything. I hateyou, I hate you so muchBut why?That's all it tells me.What the dick?Well what have we learned today, class?Absolutely nothing.I knew going into this that it was idioticto break the number one ruleof a vintage computer collectingand that is never buyan old inkjet printer.Even if it looks basically brand newand he got new cartridgesfor it and all kind...You know, I went againstmy better judgment.This is all a complete waste of timeand everything is stupidabout this printerand I don't recommendanything that I've done.Don't do any of this.Please learn from my bone headedness.Don't do this.It's not worth it.Genuinely though,if you do know of like agood '90s laser printer,I really just want acolor printer that's beigeand looks era appropriatefor '90s machines.So I can like demonstrate printable thingsin certain programs.Like for instance, when I hadmy SimCity 2000 Retrospective,I was doing thatand talking about likeusing the Urban Renewal Kitto create and print out cities.I wanted to do a demonstrationof that, you know,showing like a a '90s printer like thisprinting out how I used to doback in the day and then...And I didn't have one on handthat was aesthetically suitable.At least it printed in color.So they might be wondering,\"Oh, what about your dotmatrix color printer?\"Yeah, I do have that.The color right now isdried out and it's gone.I think I might have onemore color ribbon for that,but you know, it's adot matrix and it's...Again, it's not really era appropriate.I'm looking for somethinglate '90s but whatever,maybe I'm just...It might just be a pipe dream.It's such a crap shoot.I don't know why I'mfilming at this weird angle.Anyway, if you're still watching,thanks, I guess.I hope that you enjoyedsome part of my sufferingor something.Let me know you're awfulprinter memories if you got 'emor perhaps you're luckyand you actually do havea very nice old color inkjetprinter that still worksand you can still get ink for it,and it's great and wonderful.It's never given you issues.Let me know what model that is.That's all for this one.This is an LGR thing, I guess.Thanks for watching.\n"