Yes I used a different cable. Three of them, across the three different printers, all bidirectional. It did not make a difference. These printers are simply _pain._

I’m 37 and we had this printer in the 90s. The first time my little brother heard my father say “Fuck” was directly because of this infernal device.

Fun Fact: I've been buying printers for 30 years, and I've regretted every single one of them.

I love that the chapter names for the video are called; Betrayal, denial, anger, suffering and finally, acceptance

Seeing you whisper "I hate you so much" to your printer really sealed the deal of an authentic 90s printer experience. My mother making growling noises from her room when having to print stuff for my schoolwork in the late 90s suddenly makes a lot more sense..

I was certified to work on Cannon Bubblejet printers back in the late 90s. The training video was a technician field stripping a printer then putting it back together. They were an absolute nightmare. Much more complicated than the HP Inkjet printers. The hilarious part was that at the end of the training video there are a few extra screws sitting on the bench. The tech picks them up, puts them in his pocket and says "Those are what we call Pocket Screws". The video ended at that. Mind you, this was the official Cannon supplied training video.

Man said "25 years" then "1999" and then I fell on the floor, sobbing in agony

Former Canon service tech here: The difference between a bubblejet & an inkjet is the method used to eject the drops of ink from the print head. Canon's patented technique is to use a tiny resistive heater to vapourise the ink, creating an expanding bubble that throws a drop of ink at the paper, whereas a regular ink jet uses a piezo-electric element to squeeze out a drop of ink at the paper. Because resistive elements can be made smaller than piezo elements, a bubblejet can do a resolution of 360 DPI, while a piezo inkjet can 'only' do 300 DPI resolution. You would think that bubblejet tech would be more reliable because the ejection system is simpler & has no moving parts, but at least in my years of experience, BJ printers were very prone to clogged jets.

"Never buy an old ink jet printer." Isn't that just a more specific version of the "never buy an inkjet printer" standard.

What is wrong with us? We all watched this poor man fighting with an old printer. We've all been there. We all know how maddening this is. Yet here we are, watching someone else go through this for entertainment.

This is genuinely the most accurate inkjet printer experience you could ask for.

Age has nothing to do with it. "I bought a printer [ . . . ] & regret EVERYTHING" is a valid statement in any era.

Hey Clint, I worked at the Canon call center in Chesapeake, VA back in the late 90s for a couple of years. Watching this video was a gleefully painful trip to the past. You dealt with so many issues that I walked people thru over the phone. Lots of memories were brought back of long boring shifts. Lots of knowledge that I was quite disappointed to realize I remember and yet my brain still allowed it happen. I really enjoyed this one, thanks a ton!

You actually had a authentic 90's printer experience. We all swore like sailors, banged our heads, yelled, and screamed out loud. Thank you for bringing out my printer PTSD

I’ve seen this man rebuild motherboards from the 80’s and bring them back to life. No man is a match for a 90’s era Inkjet printer.

17:25 - I don't care what anyone says, this is an authenticate 90s home printer setup. It truly is. Great job! You perfectly captured the reason why movies like Office Space exist. Thanks.

I have a 25-year-old HP Deskjet 710C. Still use it to print every now and then. Almost gave up on it when Windows 10 rolled around with no driver support for the old beast. Greatly insprired by you, got stubborn and installed Orache VM Virtual Machine, created a Windows XP machine on it and managed to get the printer running again. For a few years now it only prints in black and magenta, so it's not perfect, but I'm still proud of myself for prolonging its life. Thank you for all your videos, I'm around your age and had noone to share my love for computers with as a kid so it is nice to have that in a virtual way as a grown up. ❤

Every printer needs to have a "Yes, I installed the ink cartridges and paper correctly and there is no jam, your sensors are just wrong" button.

When I worked I.T. as a student at college in 2006, there was an older guy there (who was full time staff) who was a printer WIZARD. He was able to pull them apart, replace individual gears and springs, and get everything moving again. Never had any issues getting them setup on a machine, either. He saved the college tons of money every year by being able to do repairs that manufacturers or other shops wouldn't or couldn't do. Miss ya, Gary.

The fact that NIB machines don't work and all that has happened is time has passed, convinces me these heaps were designed to crap out after a year or two. Modern inkjets really aren't much better. The best thing I've found is to print one page a week to keep the ink moving. If you let it sit and don't use it, it's going to be a battle to get it working again, every time.

THAT is a absolute, perfect 90s PC experience. This how we learned to troubleshoot und to fight and to not give up until the thingy was working.

I love that the largest video sections are entitled "betrayal", "denial", "anger" and "suffering"

Look forward to the "I smashed all the 90's printer with a baseball bat video"

This is one thing where nostalgia is never rose colored: installing via all those disketettes, cost of ink, needing to buy adapters and needed wires. No wifi printing from the phone. Many times, nostalgia is overrated.

i've never heard clint have to "beep" himself before.. positively tickling

I look forward to watching the LGR Birds livestream one day and seeing Clint re-enacting the printer scene from "Office Space" in the background.

Ah nice, a Printer Simulator video experience! Now I can sit back, relax while I feel my heartrate rise, my logical thinking going out the window all the while my body is starting to shiver and tears run down my face. Thanks LGR!

For lazerprinters from the 90's I'd look for a HP Laserjet 5 - Peak lazerprinters that usually only die because the brass cogs wear out (seriously. I worked in a company that shipped PC parts and we had a few of them in a dusty warehouse around 2010 that had printed over 2 million pages and only got replaced because parts where getting really hard to find).

Yep, someone broke the cartridge slot and boxed it back up. We had customers do that alot on that model.

Bubblejets were literally the worst, bubbles are supposed to be fun and this WASN’T

I worked at Best Buy when these were a major seller. I remember them in particular because they were what we called "Devo Yes" meaning when they'd come in for repair, we'd hand the customer a brand new one in box, mark down the return, and throw the broke printer in the garbage. Apparently cheaper for the manufacturer as trash than to ship and/or repair it. I remember the BJ2000 specifically due to the volume that we threw away. I'd say at least multiple units (1-5) per WEEK.

This is a gem of a video, captured something we've all gone through at one point. Thank you for sharing!

This piece of garbage wasn't good even 25 years ago, imagine today...

Why's the vintage scene harshing on old inkjets? This is the most authentic 90's computer experience I've ever seen on youtube.

Only from LGR would I lie in my bed, drowsy from sleep medication, and watch 30 minutes of a man mostly struggling with a damn printer. 😂 We appreciate it, Clint.

Hi LGR, large format printer technician here, I highly doubt that thing has a piezo electric head, but when an epson piezo head gets clogged up like this due to lack of maintenance and idling for weeks on end, we can often break the gunk up with a head soak. That being letting the print head rest on a lint free wipe that has been saturated with the recommended cleaning solution for the ink type and hardware for an hour or so to an overnight or over the weekend. Most desktop inkjets run an aqueous ink, so if you cannot find a recommended cleaning solution for this golden age artifact, a mixture of 1 part 70% iso and 2 parts distilled water should do the trick fine. The worst that could happen is that you, STILL have a non functional print head. Since it started firing a few nozzles at the end, we can almost rule out a head cable, CR board, or brain box issue. What may have happened is that ink being past it's life time. My experience is much the same, but also different since the printers I work on primarily use a solvent based ink. What happens over time is that the pigment starts to separate from the ink base. In printers that are fed by backpressure from their ink lines, this leads to the ink base flowing out, and leaving pigments behind in the cartridge. In printers that are gravity fed like the 64" and better Mutoh machines I work on from time to time, and like yours appears to be, we see the opposite problem where we are getting a higher ratio of pigment to the ink, leading to chowdered dampers and clogged nozzles. Most solvent inks start to dangerously separate after a year or so, which is why some manufacturers build a expiration date cutoff into the firmware of the machine. Assuming your machine is running an aqueous ink giving the cartridges a REAL GOOD shake should do the trick, then again they are a couple decades past their likely expiry so it may not. Cheers!

I like how there's smooth jazz playing in the background while he's slowly losing his mind.

1999: A problem occurred. 2024: Something went wrong. How the heck are we still having the exact same problems twenty-five years later?

I remember those times. I was working as a service agent, Canon printers were the worst, they only had problems. HP were strong, they had robust models with minor problems, and the cartridges were infinitely refillable. Good luck man, I appreciate what you are doing!!!

This is the funniest video you have ever made 😂😂 I couldn’t stop laughing when the pages kept coming out blank, you captured the unique frustration of dealing with printers of the 90s lol😂🎉

I used to work for an office supply company that sold TONS of HP product. A representative for the company came to give us a lecture on new product. When we grilled the rep on why their products were shoddy, why the ink costs so much, why they make it so difficult to find the product number for the cartridges, even asked them why they manufacture ink to fail...the ultimate response in the end was , "Look! I'm here to help you sell MORE HP product, not address problems with production!" All of these machines are GARBAGE! And i live for the day there's real crowd funding for an actually working computer printer with metal gears and parts!

In the last decade of watching LGR, I have not heard Clint use foul language until now. This printer must be the mother of all junk technology. And I thought HP was bad!

What did we learn children? That Canon printers have not changed. This is perhaps my favorite of all your videos.

I had one of these; what a fantastic reminder of the era! Loved the lever install feel and sound and the cartridge containers with their film covers. The printer used to get hot and you could smell the ink, the paper and the plastic. The top buttons were fantastic to use.

As someone who works in IT, if it involves a printer, it's *always* going to be a nightmare. "Wake up, Mr. Freeman. Wake up and smell the bubble jets."

"i wanted 90s printer experience" I think it's quite accurate. You got it.

I love how Clint started this video so bright and hopeful, expecting to be about to take a stroll through memory lane with a childhood printer but came out on the other side with what almost felt like a failed video project. But the thing is that this was incredible to watch because of the constant disappointments. I appreciate that you allowed us to experience your infuriation with the printer. Not every video should be a positive outcome with technology. Thank you, Clint.

Try a HP deskJet 660C I have an old one and it uses standard HP 49 ink with no weird holder assembly, it prints directly from the cartridge with no weird nozzle in between it and the paper like yours has. It’s a serial port printer and It’s a beautiful old beast. Mine was made in November of 95 and is an “SE” edition but it seems identical to the regular 600C other than using a SCSI cabe to interface with the printer for some reason.

This is the real video. What being a retro tech youtuber is really like. Not the glamor of what the edited good videos usually are. This one is usually deleted and never seeing the light of day. I applaud you letting us see the frustration of realistically working with retro tech.

“I feel like I’m taking the plutonium out of the DeLorean.” Thank you for that one. 😂

I had the exact same one in 2001! It came free with our indigo blue G3 iMac. I felt bad for tearing it down, thanks for preserving this... engaging experience

"...I just wont 90's printer expirience..." that exacly how i remember printers in 90's 😂

If anyone wonders what printing was like in the late 90's, just show them this video. Such a genuine experience. With the small exeption that back then you could take it back to the store.

I worked at Office Depot in 1999 and I can tell you that your video is a success. You have recreated the late-90s inkjet experience! We got more returns on Canon inkjet printers than any other brand for the same reasons that you are experiencing now. In fact, Canon inkjet printers took up more space in our 'returns cage' than any other item, short of Emachines computers. They were number one, but Canon inkjet printers was easily number two.

Wow, thanks for the video! Reminded me of my early experiences with computing in late 90s, early 2000s 😅 I also think it is important to have such videos on the channel… at least as a warning to anyone thinking about getting into retro devices of any kind 😄

I laughed at that "Y2K OK!" sticker on the box, what a silly thing in retrospective. Also a nice job on translating the unboxing at 7:01: [bubble wrap unwrapping all bubbly-like], sums it up pretty good.

My two most frustrating things of the 90's - Getting a printer to print - Installing a modem driver

a WHOLE 1999 experience out of the box..

That sound you made in response to the smell of the cartridge was gold. 7:53

This was a throw back but also solved something I've been trying to figure out for years., I had one of these in the 90s, been trying to rebuild the 90's home setup and have been trying to work out what was missing...

7:59 - LGR's love for smelling old stuff backfires for the first time hahaha

I owned a computershop in the 90s. Canon BubbleJets were the worst. Also Epson Styles printers had clogging issues. I always tried changing customers’ minds when they came in and asked for a Canon or Epson. If these things clogged or broke, I had to deal with the RMA issues (and that happened a lot!). Just get yourself an HP Deskjet 600, 895 or any other model from that era. Cartridges are still available and no clogging issues because you replace the printhead with each change of cartridge.

One of the reasons I really enjoy Clint's videos is because he doesn't shy away from showing failure or major problems during his setup videos. As someone who also enjoys tinkering with old PC's and tech it can be very frustrating to run into a problem and struggle for hours to negotiate or fix said problem, but I never find it discouraging or give up because LGR's videos often show that I'm not alone in that frustration or just unskilled or inept with old tech, they can simply be a pain in the ass a lot of the time but that's part of their charm.

I know these videos probably frustrate you but man its funny hearing your comments and frustrations. Reminds me soooo much of dealing with many tech purchases in the 90s.

2 Things: 1. There was a comedienne back in the early 00s that had a nice bit about printers. "People keep telling me I should have kids. What do I need kids for? I've got a printer!" "Print." "No." "Print!" "No!" "PRINT!!!" "NO!!!" 2. You should see if you can find an HP DeskJet 720C. My family had one, and it still worked when we finally tossed it just a few years ago. Thing was built like a tank and worked for 20 years. I think the cartridges in it at the end were at least 10 years old, but somehow still printed just fine. That thing was a beast and I kinda wish we'd kept it.

wow... so many pristine examples of 90's printers performing exactly as they did out of the box in the 90's. that's craftsmanship.

Hi Clint, if you want a '90s colour laser printer, I think the only option you have is one of HP ColorLaserJet printers. Colour laser printers weren't really common in the '90s and those available were mostly professional printers which were REALLY expensive... I mean they were like $3000+ in late '90s money. I had the joy of testing a ColorLaserJet5 in the Late 90s. It was HUGE, slow and used a lot of electricity... and the prints weren't as good as the ones from a halfway decent inkjet printer on good paper. The good thing about the HP printer was that it understands PostScript and HP PCL, so you should not have too many problems to get it working on most operating systems. It also came with a network interface (Ethernet or Token Ring) which may speed up printing since you have quite a bit of data to transfer to the printer for a full page of colour in 300 DPI or even more. Not sure if PostScript an the Network interface were standard or optional, so be aware to check if you want to buy one of those printers and want those options... and I'm sure you WILL want those features ;-) To be honest, I don't understand all the negativity towards ink printers. I had an Epson StylusColor II back in the days and it worked without any major issues. Yes, the print head was prone to getting clogged, especially if you used cheap 3rd party ink and yes, the original ink cartridges from Epson were expensive, but the print results were really good. I used it with Win NT4.0 and I had to download the driver from the (German) Epson mailbox... it was the most sophisticated printer driver I EVER experienced. You had tons of options for basically everything, a dozen different dithering patterns/methods, the lot. Just imagine 'Turbo Print' on steroids... if you are aware of Turbo Print ;-) But I also never experienced a printer from the bottom range, so maybe those were especially crappy. Nowadays, if you are complaining about Ink prices, you bought the wrong printer! I got myself an Epson 'EcoTank' printer and the Ink comes in bottles instead of cartridges. A 130 ml Black bottle is about 15€ and a 70 ml colour one is about 10€. And that's the genuine Epson one. 3rd party ink is even cheaper and there is nothing that keeps you from using 3rd party ink. But with those prices, I don't think it is worth the bother to use 3rd party ink. I think Canon also offers similar printers, so you don't need to buy an Epson one if you don't like the brand.

You are awesome. Thank you for this great channel!

I HAD THIS THING BACK THEN IT SUCKED EVEN THEN. I saw the photo of the box and hours and hours of fighting this thing when a paper was due flooded back into my mind...

Back in the late 90s we followed what is still the best printer advice and bought a Brother mono laser. It was perfection. The only reason we replaced it was that a new Brother mono laser was cheaper than a new toner and drum for the old one.

7:00 that is one unfortunate serial number. I've had customers call and complain about how we are harassing them over things like that. Finally got rid of them by giving them the number for the manufacturer.

In running those printers I learned that messing around with the ecp/epp settings along with i/o and irq settings in the bios helped solve a lot of the connectivity problems. It was still a nightmare though. Anything other than a dot matrix printer was pretty much gonna be a fight.

Clint accidentally huffing off gassed bubble jet ink was the highlight of this video.

I had this exact model of printer back in the 90s. In my experience, it had two operating modes: 1, it would grab multiple sheets at random, cruch them up, and block the printer, requiring a time-consuming process to untangle everything; or 2, it would grab a sheet, spit some random bits of ink on it, shake my desk violently as the printer head moved back and forth, and spit the paper out across the room. And always when you had to print a paper for school the next day.

My parents owned an early Bubble Jet model, the sounds of that print engine (and the enraging issues) instantly brought back plenty of memories...

I have my old Canon ip-5000 in the garage from 2005. Hasnt been used in 15 years. Same ink it was stored with and its first test page after all that time in my dusty garage was perfect. Loved your video tho, we've all been there and done that, be it a printer or some other cool old tech.

5:48 Seeing a 24-year-old review of anything on Amazon feels kind of like a time capsule in itself!

Ink jet printers took many of us through the 5 stages of grief over the years, thanks for documenting this journey.

I had some kind of HP DeskJet printer back in the 90's. Can't remember the model, but it was inkjet, but it also had a heating element that use to dry the ink on the way through to stop it smudging. It was an absolutely brilliant printer, but was only monochrome. Absolutely loved that printer.

absolutely a subscriber now, i can't miss these videos! ️

As much as we love old tech, we also love watching people suffer from said old tech not working as it should.

Gonna embrace my inner Canon and be an absolute bitch to deal with

I remember having a BJC-1000 series printer with its one cartridge at a time system. You could either print color or black, but not both at the same time. It also had a cartridge box for keeping whichever cartridge you weren't using in. It made "black" (more like a dark green) by combining all 3 colors at once. It worked ok, but it had a tendency to fail on big (more than about 15 page) prints randomly

I had a Canon BJC-4400 printer and it worked great. I never used it as a color printer, but instead use the large black cartridge (BC-01) for it and would last a long time. Every time you bought a new black cartridge (BC-01) you got a new print-head as well. It was also an easy cartridge to refill and reuse. You could print on both sides of page too. Today, I'm using a HP LaserJet 1320 printer and it's been going strong for about 10 years. It doesn't care I use HP branded cartridges or not. But my printing needs are modest at best.

I remember that stupid BJC-4300 that dried within a week of not using it and wasted a fifth of the super expensive colors with each self cleaning cycle and it still made stripes. This video is the most accurate late 90s experience you could have asked for. Back then I only didn't know that I wasn't the only one suffering... but obviously the whole world did. Thank you for bringing peace to this part of my memories.

"I was making my parents' printer work in the '90s" got me through every IT job interview in my life.

as someone who worked for years in a tech support call center for Gateway around the time these things were bundled with most home computer purchases (along with Windows ME!), this video gave me a special kind of dread. thank you for unlocking painful memories. and my condolences.

I had this printer back in the day. You had to buy the BC-20 cartridge which was the larger black one if you wanted to do any serious printing. As for the loose parts, someone messed with it. It was not like that from factory. My biggest headache back in the day was the whole head cleaning and the amount of ink wasted. Switched to refill kits with syringes until cheap generic carts on ebay became a thing.

Yells "I shouldn't have smelled that"... My new catch phrase. Best 😂

When I saw the title of this video, the first thing I thought was, "This is going to be a big waste of time, energy and money." I started my technician career working for Xerox, so I've seen and worked on every type of print engine from ink jet to high volume commercial. This is exactly how these printers are designed to fail. Ink jet printers are supposed to only last 3 years (max) with recommended usage. Even commercial ink jet machines required a print head replacement after 2 or 3 years. I hated every single one in my territory. As for a laser printer of that vintage, more bad news. Ink jet printers were making huge leaps in photo printing at the time. This put pressure on the big companies to pour money in to advance the toner and developer in their machines. Colour toner machines were putting out dark, muddy photo prints. Lots of innovation happened which was great for pushing the quality of both wet and dry ink engines. Unfortunately this resulted in about a 5 year life span of dry toner. Developer and toner was getting much better to use less toner (part of the muddy picture problem) and smaller particles to deliver toner to the page more accurately. Some commercial printers might have had longer toner support but I doubt anything would be later than 10 years. This is also the time when machines were moving from an analog engine to digital. So basically lots happening in the printing world with a large turnover of both technology and supplies.

So talking one grognard to another, back in the day we used to keep on hand some really fine syringes to use with cleaning up machines like this. The isopropyl can only work so well by itself, it either needs massive time or considerable force when dealing with truly stuck dry-out. I'd expect, at least with the black, you also may have a clog in the head or arm itself instead of just in the carriage. The scanner issue seemed to either be a result of 1: your machine having communication issues meaning a card or port was suffering, most likely from inconsistent power delivery or 2: the scan module itself may have a contact pad that contacts and communicates inside the printer, meaning there's an inconsistent link in that chain somewhere. In regards to the laser printers, honestly there were no home-dedicated color lasers outside of apple until the mid/late 90's, so I'm not even sure what to recommend here. Buying some old and giant business class machine like a Ricoh or Xerox seems insane, but Toner holds up much better over long periods of no or little use, and ANY inkjet you get is going to have the same issues these ones did

That's my first printer!! How nostalgic! In fact I actually had 2 of these, one on windows 98 and one on windows 3.1, on Windows 3.1 there's sometimes many errors due to the lack of RAM memory on the 386. On Windows 98 this was a great BUBBLE JET printer! However, I remember the BC-21 head clogging up every time I didn't use the printer for more than a month or two! For this reason I bought a special liquid with which to clean the head every now and then, it worked but not very well. I think you can try HP Laserjet 6P/6MP, color laser printer from 1996 but I don't know if the toner are still available in US.

I remember there was a time in the 2000s that it was basically the same price to buy a new printer with ink cartridge rather than buy a replacement ink cartridge

I gave up on having a printer decades ago. With the ink nonsense & the other ways they try to "monetize" you nowadays its just not worth it to own a printer. If i need a hard copy of something i put it on a thumb drive & go to the library & use their printers. Who wouldve thought that the best argument for the "paperless office" would come from printer manufacturers?

These printers are gems no doubt. I own the BJC 4200, I purchased it back in 1995ish but I loved the sound it makes when opening up the front to access the ink cartridges, and to think they were making bubblejets back then.

I love videos like these. So nostalgic. There's a reason I hate printers. I hate working on them and printing on them. This video let me revisit that pain without being the one doing all the leg work. You're the best!

in 1999 my dad came back home with one of these thinking he wouldn't have to give me more "print at stationary store" money. From then on he had to give me "fix the printer" money. fuck you canon

Brother, you just had a 100% legit experience of using an inkjet printer from this era, it was like this back in the day too

15:19 OH That classic noise brought back some memories, holy wow

As someone who is poor, I feel your pain. Especially with the error messages that don’t tell you what the errors are. And that you’re supposed to just contact a service center that doesn’t exist anymore (or never existed in the first place in my country) and that you’re just supposed to buy a new one. Which also is built just the same way, not meant to last more than a year or two. Planned obsolescence.