There’s an area in the foyer of my apartment building where people leave stuff they no longer want but someone else might.  I’ve gotten a couple of nice metal plant stands and a great bookcase and have given away a few things myself.

Friday, Tim and I were going out to the gym when we noticed a big printer out in the foyer.  It turned out to be a photo printer with a scanner, copier and fax machine.  We plugged it into the outlet there to make sure the power was working at least; it came on fine and we brought it back into our apartment before heading out.

Later that day, I downloaded the necessary drivers and software from the Dell website and proceeded to print a test page.  Uh oh, it wouldn’t print! A 0502 error showed up on the printer’s display and a pop-up appeared on my PC instructing me to open the cover and clear any obstructions that were preventing the ink cartridges from moving.

I followed the instructions but didn’t see anything. I tried to print a test page again and got the same error.  “Gee,” I thought to myself, “Were they just too lazy to go down to the trash room with it?”  As a last resort, I turned to my trusty friend, the internet, and googled the error to see if I was missing something.  One site said that the encoder strip may have gotten loose and the solution was to simply push it back in to place.  It sounded easy enough and I hoped that this would solve the problem.  I opened the cover again and tried to slide the cartridges aside per the instructions, but they wouldn’t budge.  What gives?  Grrr!  I was beginning to think that maybe it was broken beyond repair.

Unable to follow the online instructions, I got desperate and started shaking the printer every which way hoping that whatever was loose might just fall back into place.  After a couple good shakes, something fell out. Oh no! Did I make it worse? Hey waitaminute…

What fell out was a Styrofoam packing peanut. That’s definitely not supposed to be there.  I looked to see where it had come from, and then I spotted the culprits. There, jammed into the corners, were at least 4 more peanuts!  After a bit more shaking, some finger jamming and the help of tweezers, I ended up removing a total of 8 squished packing peanuts and a few broken Styrofoam chunks.  I then crossed my fingers and tried to print another test page.

Success! Though the ink was a bit low, the test page printed out correctly.  The scanning and copying functions worked perfectly.  I now have a fully functional, free all-in-one printer!

Since it only took me less than 10 minutes to troubleshoot, I wonder why the previous owner gave up on it.  Oh well, I guess one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure, or in this cause, someone’s lack of resourcefulness leads to my advantage.

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