Well, I've got a head-scratcher - hopefully! Hopefully, rather, the generous and oft-underappreciated techs browsing this board enjoy a good head-scratcher...
Background
Our office has a Ricoh Aficio SP c811dn color laser printer, a pretty basic setup with just the base unit and an extra paper tray. At first glance it seemed to be a first-gen color laser printer from the early days, a massive behemoth of a machine. I was completely blindsided when I pulled out the control unit and found a hard drive, then a northbridge and southbridge, and what appeared to be (and was later confirmed to be) an x86 CPU - it's got a freakin' PC running the printer! Opening up the controller box, I was then pulled into a world of fascination when I saw an uncountable number of drive motors and sensors, a complex orchestra of printing madness that is an absolute miracle it works, and works as well as it does...
I dug into it and found it has 167,000 pages on it (about 100,000 in color mode since our users don't seem to like hitting "properties" to adjust the modes), has had every "counter-based" part replaced at least once, and had a run of SC340 (TD sensor output error) codes (don't have the materials with me at the moment, had to back-Google that - I just remember it was related to TD, had a "0", and started with "3") about 10,000 pages ago, about the time when the techs (and hence, our office) gave up on the printer and replaced it. We kept the Ricoh around as a backup.
Problem
For all that technology, it's begun to stump me as to why the heck the printer does what it does. It works. But it only works when you override all the supply and wear indicators in service mode! It prints with as-designed quality after the first 2-3 prints that come out with huge (but fading) black cloud-streaks across the width of the first few pages. It shows all toner levels as "full" at all times, but insists the transfer belt, fuser, PCUs, all need to be replaced "now"...
Diagnostics already performed
In diagnosing the problem (with the guidance of the 750-page service manual), I turned off the supply/detection overrides and let it detect itself. It immediately lit up errors like a Christmas tree: all the toners were at "low" (admittedly, they are old, but only one or two are near-empty), and the only component that didn't claim "Replace Now" was the waste toner bottle (the only "OK" on the screen)! In fact, it didn't even detect the PCUs at all - it said to "properly install the Black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow units" - all 4 of them at once! It wouldn't let me go any further than that if I enabled those detections.
I checked all the wiring I could find back in the controller area. Both the I/O board and the one below it (forgot its name) have their jungle of connectors fully seated. All wiring going to each sensor is seated. The PCUs don't have any damage to their pseudo-RJ45 connector pairs nor their spring/contact pairs. The image transfer belt looks a bit worn, but clean. Belt cleaner assembly was a disgusting mess of toner everywhere, but still producing good prints after the belt traveled around it once or twice (though the streaks would come/go every 20-25 continuous prints or so, and reappear again on the first pages whenever the printer is idle for a while). Waste toner bottle is about 75% full (and oh my god, how does this thing waste THAT MUCH toner?!). PCU drums look clean and the PCUs themselves look pretty new. Curiously, though, the printer's "location" setting was set to 2: EU, instead of 1: NA (and this was brought to my attention by the "*" non-default option indicator on the printout), but even after a NVRAM upload-and-clear, I wasn't able to change that to the right setting (so I re-downloaded the NVRAM from that backup) - and it still did exactly the same thing. Finally, all the identification info for the various components is blank as well - "empty string" for anything text, and a blank serial number, for all 4 toner bottles - but they had installation dates. I believe the tech also replaced the sensor board as well, to no avail. It's reporting version 1.07 of the firmware, and various other firmware versions for the individual components. I have had nothing but failure trying to find firmware updates for this thing...
Finally...
The only clues to something being wrong are the TD voltages reported on the print. If I remember correctly, it was the TD "minimum" voltage that was reported for the Black PCU, that was out-of-place from the rest. I believe it was around 2.5 volts while the rest were near 3.0-3.1v. Being that I haven't yet been able to find a definition for the term "TD" (Toner Density?), I had trouble finding the sensor to check.
So, our distributor/supporter was stumped, and I'm getting there myself. I plan on tracking down the old PCUs stocked back in the printer-supply area and seeing if a different PCU provides a different error message (perhaps removing black will show "install Black" instead of "install K, C, Y, M", if Black is corrupting the others?), but I hope someone here can give me a "oh, I know how that happened" kinda direction! Any and all possibilities, I'm open to - provided they're not "shotgun" solutions like replacing a controller board as a "might be"
But any direction would be much appreciated, because this Ricoh thing... holy CRAP, I have an HP Color LJ 1600 sitting on my dresser 5 feet away at home that may as well just be a single module in this Ricoh! Hard to believe this thing really needs to be as complicated as they designed it when it was built in 2007... :/
Background
Our office has a Ricoh Aficio SP c811dn color laser printer, a pretty basic setup with just the base unit and an extra paper tray. At first glance it seemed to be a first-gen color laser printer from the early days, a massive behemoth of a machine. I was completely blindsided when I pulled out the control unit and found a hard drive, then a northbridge and southbridge, and what appeared to be (and was later confirmed to be) an x86 CPU - it's got a freakin' PC running the printer! Opening up the controller box, I was then pulled into a world of fascination when I saw an uncountable number of drive motors and sensors, a complex orchestra of printing madness that is an absolute miracle it works, and works as well as it does...
I dug into it and found it has 167,000 pages on it (about 100,000 in color mode since our users don't seem to like hitting "properties" to adjust the modes), has had every "counter-based" part replaced at least once, and had a run of SC340 (TD sensor output error) codes (don't have the materials with me at the moment, had to back-Google that - I just remember it was related to TD, had a "0", and started with "3") about 10,000 pages ago, about the time when the techs (and hence, our office) gave up on the printer and replaced it. We kept the Ricoh around as a backup.
Problem
For all that technology, it's begun to stump me as to why the heck the printer does what it does. It works. But it only works when you override all the supply and wear indicators in service mode! It prints with as-designed quality after the first 2-3 prints that come out with huge (but fading) black cloud-streaks across the width of the first few pages. It shows all toner levels as "full" at all times, but insists the transfer belt, fuser, PCUs, all need to be replaced "now"...
Diagnostics already performed
In diagnosing the problem (with the guidance of the 750-page service manual), I turned off the supply/detection overrides and let it detect itself. It immediately lit up errors like a Christmas tree: all the toners were at "low" (admittedly, they are old, but only one or two are near-empty), and the only component that didn't claim "Replace Now" was the waste toner bottle (the only "OK" on the screen)! In fact, it didn't even detect the PCUs at all - it said to "properly install the Black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow units" - all 4 of them at once! It wouldn't let me go any further than that if I enabled those detections.
I checked all the wiring I could find back in the controller area. Both the I/O board and the one below it (forgot its name) have their jungle of connectors fully seated. All wiring going to each sensor is seated. The PCUs don't have any damage to their pseudo-RJ45 connector pairs nor their spring/contact pairs. The image transfer belt looks a bit worn, but clean. Belt cleaner assembly was a disgusting mess of toner everywhere, but still producing good prints after the belt traveled around it once or twice (though the streaks would come/go every 20-25 continuous prints or so, and reappear again on the first pages whenever the printer is idle for a while). Waste toner bottle is about 75% full (and oh my god, how does this thing waste THAT MUCH toner?!). PCU drums look clean and the PCUs themselves look pretty new. Curiously, though, the printer's "location" setting was set to 2: EU, instead of 1: NA (and this was brought to my attention by the "*" non-default option indicator on the printout), but even after a NVRAM upload-and-clear, I wasn't able to change that to the right setting (so I re-downloaded the NVRAM from that backup) - and it still did exactly the same thing. Finally, all the identification info for the various components is blank as well - "empty string" for anything text, and a blank serial number, for all 4 toner bottles - but they had installation dates. I believe the tech also replaced the sensor board as well, to no avail. It's reporting version 1.07 of the firmware, and various other firmware versions for the individual components. I have had nothing but failure trying to find firmware updates for this thing...
Finally...
The only clues to something being wrong are the TD voltages reported on the print. If I remember correctly, it was the TD "minimum" voltage that was reported for the Black PCU, that was out-of-place from the rest. I believe it was around 2.5 volts while the rest were near 3.0-3.1v. Being that I haven't yet been able to find a definition for the term "TD" (Toner Density?), I had trouble finding the sensor to check.
So, our distributor/supporter was stumped, and I'm getting there myself. I plan on tracking down the old PCUs stocked back in the printer-supply area and seeing if a different PCU provides a different error message (perhaps removing black will show "install Black" instead of "install K, C, Y, M", if Black is corrupting the others?), but I hope someone here can give me a "oh, I know how that happened" kinda direction! Any and all possibilities, I'm open to - provided they're not "shotgun" solutions like replacing a controller board as a "might be"
But any direction would be much appreciated, because this Ricoh thing... holy CRAP, I have an HP Color LJ 1600 sitting on my dresser 5 feet away at home that may as well just be a single module in this Ricoh! Hard to believe this thing really needs to be as complicated as they designed it when it was built in 2007... :/
That's a whole lot of writing, and I'm still a little fuzzy on what your basic issues are. How about a one paragraph synopsis for us simple folk?
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