HP LJ 6MP printing is washed out

  • Thread starter Thread starter charles cashion
  • Start date Start date
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charles cashion

I am running Fedora Core 4 on an AMD Athlon 2000+ desktop.
I just purchased an HP LaserJet 6MP (second hand of course).
I set it up using
Desktop > System Settings > Printing > "printconf-gui"
At the end of the setup, I printed the test page and it
looks very good.

Then I printed a copy of text file TravelCheckList
[charles@dawg travel]$ lp TravelCheckList
The TravelCheckList printed in only a few seconds but
the letters are all uniformly light. Very light.

I have read the man page for "lp", but find nothing
about setting the darkness. Is there some setting for
darkness?

Tnx,
Charles
 
charles cashion said:
I am running Fedora Core 4 on an AMD Athlon 2000+ desktop.
I just purchased an HP LaserJet 6MP (second hand of course).
I set it up using
Desktop > System Settings > Printing > "printconf-gui"
At the end of the setup, I printed the test page and it
looks very good.

Then I printed a copy of text file TravelCheckList
[charles@dawg travel]$ lp TravelCheckList
The TravelCheckList printed in only a few seconds but
the letters are all uniformly light. Very light.

I have read the man page for "lp", but find nothing
about setting the darkness. Is there some setting for
darkness?
Click to expand...

HP had an "econo" setting for some printers of that era; I've seen it on
an LJ2100, which seems to be about the same printer. With that mode
enabled, text was printed as a dark outline filled with gray. Check the
printer menus for an econo or toner save setting.

There may also be density or darkness settings on the printer, but you
normally shouldn't have to change those.

Finally, there's the printing software. lp just sends the file to a
print queue. After that, it may be sent on to the printer as text, or
rendered into a bitmap, and the lightness could be caused by a setting
of that rendering software.
 
Warren said:
Check the
printer menus for an econo or toner save setting.

There may also be density or darkness settings on the printer, but you
normally shouldn't have to change those.
Click to expand...

How does one access the printer menus?
Charles
(thanks)
 
charles cashion said:
How does one access the printer menus?
Charles
(thanks)
Click to expand...

There aren't any internal menus for this printer that can be accessed from the
printer itself.
But you can print a self test page by pressing the GO and RESET/JOB CANCEL
buttons simultaneously while the printer is in READY mode. There is an entry
for Econo Mode, if that is ON then you are in the wrong mode. This should be
reset to OFF if you do a NVRAM initialisation by pressing the RESET/JOB CANCEL
button for more than 20 seconds.

Normally for this printer econo mode and other parameters are set from the
printer driver, I have no idea what options the Fedora Core printer drivers
give but in Windows you can set econo mode on or off from the driver.
Tony
 
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