Tektronix 350 Stuck Initializing

[diprato]

I bought an old Phaser 350 and am trying to see if it will work. I can't find info in the manual or anywhere else on how long the initialization phase should last, mine has been going for over an hour and a half now; making whirring noises every now and then and such.

1. Should I assume it is "stuck" although I have gotten no error messages. I hate to turn the thing off again, because the ink is low and I am going to spend a lot of money sticking ink in this thing if I keep turning it off; it might just be a gonner and buying ink would be a waste. (It seems a poor design that it sucks up so much ink just to start, with no way to skip this step to simply verify the printer's status - whether its DOA - without using up a lot of expensive ink).

2. There was discussion last month about a heater lamp that could go bad but it wasn't clear to me exactly where to look for this lamp (right side was all it said)Do you have to remove something to see it?

 

[diprato]

I had to turn it off and now I have to order yellow ink sticks (already ordered magenta and black).

I reset the ram and have pulled the network card to eliminate that from the equation. Now I wait ... it will probably suck up the cyan next time, and then I'll need to buy that (damn!)

 

[w8ing]

I wish I could help you. I am having the same problem with my 360. It says warming up and initializing, but never ready. I hope there is a reasonable remedy for this. Best of luck.

 

[diprato]

As per previous posts (and common sense since bulbs do burn out)there's a possibility that it is the drum pre-heater causing this problem.

Apparently the drum is heated with halogen bulbs and we should be able to see the lights come on when the printer starts. I did not notice the lights when I was starting the printer (Not sure if we have to open the front door or not). Have not tried it again so far because of all the ink these printers waste when they start up.

Maybe someone on here could tell us exactly where to look for the lights. Also, if it is the heater, and we can just replace halogen bulbs, it appears that there is some disassembly required to get the heater out. A disassembly FRU or better yet a shortcut that bypasses total disassembly and the problems it entails; would be most helpful.

 

[ari014]

Eternal initialization:
-----------------------
You have to feed paper in manual feeder (several, one at a time). Your machine is configured to use (recycled) paper from manual feeder instead of (letterhead) from drawer in initialization phase. When up and running, you can change this from menu.

Lamp:
-----
Lamp's normal operation in idle is to flash at around 30 Hz. When warming light pulses get longer. When too hot, drum fan will start to operate with similar pattern. This way machine controls drum temperature. You can't see the lamp (in very dark some light from went opening in right side).

If drum heater is not heating enough (broke e.a.), you get error 15,004.45

BR,
Ari

 

[diprato]

Thanks for your post Ari. I'm new to this so I hope you will bear with me.

Regarding:

>>>"You have to feed paper in manual feeder (several, one at a time). Your machine is configured to use (recycled) paper from manual feeder instead of (letterhead) from drawer in initialization phase. When up and running, you can change this from menu."

Does this mean my machine might work if I just feed paper from the manual feeder while it is saying "initializing"? My printer has (had?) an intermittant paper pickup problem when I received it. I cleaned the rollers and have not used it enough to know if it is fixed yet. When first turned on it did pickup paper several times from the tray to print the cleaning sheets (although it jammed once).

Also: During the last attempted startup I reset the NVRAM. If it was configured to use paper from the manual feeder before, will this have changed now that the ram is reset?

>>>"If drum heater is not heating enough (broke e.a.), you get error 15,004.45"

I'm not getting any error message (so far anyway). I will assume this is a good thing.

Thanks again.