HP Deskjet Printhead Alignment

Hi,

I’m trying to get an HP Deskjet 985Cxi printer to print properly under RISC OS3.11. It appears the printhead alginment is out, the issue being the printer printed part of the depth of each line and sometimes missed lines entirely. I’ve run HP Toolbox Align tool under Windows 98SE and have managed to get the printer printing correctly. However, when I switch the printer back to the Acorn PC the printing issue remains unresolved. The only thing I can think of is that the HP Toolbox align tool must store correction settings within the Windows 98SE OS rather than passing the adjustments to the printer itself to store.

The printer driver being used under RISC OS3.11 is the HP Deskjet 850 driver as it is the closest available.

Are there any separate tools for RISC OS3.11 that can provide equivalents for the HP Toolbox tools or is there another way to achieve printhead aligment?

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

I tried searching for Deskjet 985cxi, but all the references I can find are to 895cxi. Is this actually your printer, and 985 was just a typo?

However, I can’t find any information that would help. The 895cxi manual appears to date from 1999, so it must be an old printer. The manual doesn’t specify how many jets the printer has, or what driver protocol it needs. If there isn’t a correct RISC OS driver for it, you may be out of luck other than using UniPrint.

The only other alternative would appear to be an indirect route, something like print to PDF and print the PDF from your Windows machine.

Thank you for your reply, Dave.

Apologies for the typo. The printer is a Deskjet 895Cxi as you surmised, and yes it is an old printer connected to an Acorn Archimedes PC.

In the meantime I think that it may be the printhead on the cartridge that is drying out. The solution that appears to work is simply to soak the cartridge printhead in warm/hot water for 15 minutes, carefully dry it out and reinstall the cartridge, after which printing returns to normal.

Thanks again.