Ricoh Aficio 2238c "Fusing Unit Setting Error" and/or stuck at "Please Wait"

[mattg]

Hello Everyone,

My employer recently acquired a set of used Ricoh Aficio 2238c units which I, a lowly desktop support grunt, now have the honor and privilege of of supporting.

One unit is now giving me some trouble. The unit suffered a paper jam, which another employee removed (after turning off the main power switch, which might or might not have contributed to this issue - I don't know one way or the other). Afterwards, the unit would only start up to the "Please Wait" screen on the display, and the paper jam indicator light remained lit.

I took a peek and, sure enough, there were two more pages jammed in the fuser. I removed them, but nothing happened. Powered off the printer for a few minutes, turned it back on, but the printer was still stuck at "Please Wait."

I'd seen this behavior before, and had fixed it by disconnecting the hard drives (which, incidentally, aren't the drives that came with the unit, but instead are the most expensive 80GB Hitachi Deskstar IDE drives I've ever purchased) so I powered the printer down again, pulled the drives, and started it back up.

Lo and behold, the printer made it past the "Please Wait" display ... and to an error proclaiming "Fusing Unit Setting Error: Fusing Unit not set correctly," along with a diagram of how to re-set the fuser.

I've re-seated the fusing unit several times now. I've done it with the printer powered up, and with it powered off. Neither made a bit of difference. I've pulled the fuser completely out of the printer and re-installed it - no joy.

On a whim, I reattached the hard drives, and the printer still will not progress past "Please Wait" with them attached.

Of course I could buy a replacement fuser unit, however given the hard drive-related troubles, I want to make certain that the fuser really needs to be replaced before I tell the Boss that she needs to pony up for parts.

I've read in the service manual that this error can be caused by an incorrect DIP switch setting on the BCU board, or as a result of the device number and destination code not being properly programmed - however, the latter is mentioned in the procedure for replacing the NVRAM (which I haven't done), and as for the former, I don't even know where the BCU board is, and I know that I certainly haven't been flipping DIP switches.

I hope someone can give me a clue on how to proceed troubleshooting this set of problems. Thanks!

[TonerMunkeh]

You checked for paper fragments in the fuser connector? Could be the cause. With regards to the HDD, sounds like it'd been baked by the continuous off/on by the users. An off-the-shelf 80GB IDE drive will do, the machine formats it itself.

[mattg]

Thank you TonerMunkeh! Indeed, there were a few tiny bits of paper jammed inside of each of the two electrical connectors on the fuser unit. After a little tweezer work, that problem was resolved.

The paper misfeed light went back on, so I checked the rest of the hatches, removed another sheet, and tried again. No warning lights, but the display was still stuck at "Please Wait." OK, powered back down, switched around the IDE connectors (this unit takes two hard drives), and Presto! Working printer.

I guess that this problem can get chalked up to incompetence on the part of the amateur printer technician (me). Didn't look hard enough at the fuser unit to see the problem, and must've re-connected the hard drives in reverse.

FWIW, I went through a stack of old IDE hard drives trying to find a pair that would work in this printer - to no avail. We bought a pair that was guaranteed compatible - for $400. When they arrived, they were Hitachi Deskstar Model# HDS721680PLAT80 drives - which can be purchased online for a much more reasonable price. The two I bought from Amazon - for $20 apiece - worked just as well as the guaranteed compatible drives (just jumper each of the two drives for Cable Select). Hopefully that nugget of info will save someone else from getting ripped off!