Can I rescue my v old printer?

Simran

Hi

I have a very old NEC Silentwriter Superscript 610 laser printer that has been resting on the shelf for many years. It was by far the best printer I have had and used to print brilliantly, letting me print thousands of high quality sheets before having to replace the toner. It has remained disused for a long time and I was wondering if there is any way at all that I can make it compatible to/usable with my "modern" PC/laptops that have Vista or Windows 7 versions?

patman99

Have you tried plugging it in and seeing if Windows picks it up automatically.

swvillafan

Does it have a USB port? If so have you tried just connecting it to see if it works? Windows 7 driver database is very good so you might be lucky!

Simran

it doesn't have a USB port, its one of those connections with lots of pins...I last tried it on a previous computer a few years ago without any luck (in fact it crashed that PC!!) but will try it tonight on my latest ones.

chunter

http://support.necam.com/printers/drivers/drivers.cfm

Looks like a "no"

swvillafan

chunter wrote: »

http://support.necam.com/printers/drivers/drivers.cfm

Unfortunately the 610 model the OP has is not listed. There is a 640 which might be ok but the drivers only go up to XP which again might be ok (or it might not!)

patman99

You will need a printer-port to USB adapter. I have had an HP LJ4Plus working under Win. 7 despite there being no driver support.

Owain_Moneysaver

That printer has a PCL emulation mode, so it may work if you tell Windows to print to eg a HP LaserJet IIP in PCL mode. You may need to do some button presses on the printer to put it into PCL mode or to get it to spit the page out at the end if the PCL file you send to the printer does not end with a form feed command.

However, lovely though the printer was in its day, a new mono laser can be had for under £100 and is probably going to be higher resolution and use less energy.