HP deskjet 960c printer stair-step printing problem

Question

Hi there, my printer used to work beautifully. Now when it prints it I get a stair-step effect. ie it starts OK, then the image moves up by a millimeter, then another millimeter etc etc. It's very annoying. It does it no matter what I print, text, images, pdfs...
Can anyone throw any light on this, and what I might do to correct it? I'm on a G4 quicksilver using os x 10.3.9. Printer driver is up to date as far as I know.
TA!

Answer 1

Kathykate,
We're still reading--
Ooooh these printers, I could scream!
I can be very frustrating at times. Especially when you have intermittent problems.
First, I switched the usb cables around, and that
didn't make a difference.
It was a thought. We can pretty much rule out a bad USB cable now.
Then I installed the
gutenprint drivers. They printed out my images in a
not very clear kind of pointalist dots type way, my
type was no longer clear, and the colours were not as
good as before and anyway, it still stair-stepped so
I uninstalled them.
Interesting that the printing is "pointalist". My old HP 870 also uses the PCL 3 driver from Gutenprint. Text is great. I really don't use that printer for images, however. I have noticed a blue shift in the tones. The fact that the printer is still stair-stepping with these drivers would point to the printer malfunctioning. Especially as I look back over the previous posts and noticed that the stair-stepping seems to have increased in displacement.
But I noticed something in the
gutenprint set up where it talked about respooling
your printer? Basically you had to go into file
sharing and click printers to file share and this
reset something.
I don't recall seeing that. Do you recall what part of the documentation that was in?
Did 4 prints and no stair-stepping!
Thought I'd cracked it! Of course the next one
stair-stepped... Have also tried the usb cable
directly into the back of the computer (it's normally
plugged into a belkin hub).
So that one is completely unsolved, still random
stair-stepping.
All indications seem to point to this being a hardware issue with the printer. The only other test I can think of is to try it on another computer. A Windows box would be a good choice. I know the option of trying things on a different computer is not always possible. I just hate to condemn a printer to the trash heap until all possible avenues have been explored.
My big 1125c is also still a 'mare. When it prints,
it's great, no stair-stepping. But my mac keeps
losing the connection to it.
Again, the frustration of a sometimes problem. I don't have any good advice here. We have seen this type of problem before and there doesn't seem to be any one thing that helps in all cases. I have three printers. My Epson SC 800 which is connected via a parallel to USB adapter has this problem. I have not found a solution for it. My other 2 printers never skip a beat.
Haven't yet run Apple Hardward Test disk (think I
have it somewhere) although tried the Printer Setup
Repair mentioned and that hasn't seemed to help.
I would still recommend that you give this a go. There still could be a problematic USB port on your computer that is causing some of the problem.
PS Have today posted another question about something
in terminal saying 1 thing is stuck, see below,
that's nothing to do with this is it?
Processes: 59 total, 4 running, 1 stuck, 54
sleeping... 177 threads 11:00:35
Load Avg: 0.68, 1.18, 1.47 CPU usage: 72.8% user,
27.2% sys, 0.0% idle
SharedLibs: num = 125, resident = 36.9M code, 3.73M
data, 9.82M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 6837, resident = 354M + 15.4M
private, 271M shared
PhysMem: 105M wired, 527M active, 335M inactive, 968M
used, 183M free
VM: 5.81G + 102M 70193(0) pageins, 6674(0) pageouts
I took a look at that thread. I think the responder is correct in all respects as to the stuck process. I doubt it has anything to do with your printing problems.
Matt
Mac Mini G4; B&W G3/300