Don't understand what you mean ?
How could serial be why these printers are gone ? Mine is // as I just said
Even in 1997 when I bought it, every printer was //, I do'nt remember that printers were serial back tehn and that oyu had to pay extra to get a // interface ?!
The reason they are gone is probably simply because... they are 25 years old now ?
Take any USB printer that's 20 or even just 10 years old... how many are still left today ?
Plus the HP LaserJet 6P is still far from gone, I expect, seeing as the cartridges are still readiliy available and for cheap at that.
If it was gone, nobody would bother making the cartridges available and/or they would charge through the roof or them, due to lack of demand / low volume.
I doubt a fancy fast USB printer today will be in as good a shape in 25 years as my 6P is today....
Nah, 25 years still going strong. I now make a point of keeping it just so I can see how long it can last. I will apply for an entry in the Guinness Record Book !
But // sucks... cable is heavy. I need a serial printer so I can hook it to my old scopes
Been thinking / dreaming of a A3 format colour laser printer for 10 years now. Prices are going down but not fast enough for me to afford one. At least not a good one, not a cheap bottom of the barrel one that's designed to cost a fortune to run and fall apart the days after the warranty expires, or even have firmware tricks for planned obsolescence or to force you into buying expensive OEM consumables.
Nah, no thanks. So until I can get a viable and affordable A3 colour laser, I will keep my old // Laserjet. It's a workhorse and costs nothing to run. Cost me two 20 Euros cartridges in 25 years, 400 pages each... how do these cheap modern inkjet printers compare ?! I don't care if they have a fast USB port.... it hardly balances things out !
Would love an old black and white HP tracer too, so I can print 3 or 4 page foldout schematics from service manuals
EDIT : in 1999 IIRC, or something like that, I remember maxing out the RAM in the printer. IIRC it had 6MB built-in, and it had a couple RAM slots for expansion. I maxed it out for cheap as it was using consumer computer grade RAM sticks which I got cheap at some computer fair. I don't know if that makes processing images faster or not Can't remember how it was before the upgrade...
but yeah I agree it's a bit slow at printing full page pictures.
Hold on, lemme print a test page.... oh I was wrong, it has 2MB built-in not 6, and has 3 slots for expansion not 2. It says that I installed one 4MB stick and two 8MB sticks. Total RAM 22MB.
Why not large format inkjet that is actually vaxjet, space?
Vax is a bit more robust if you don't need transparency.
I think I have about a dozen printers, big and small, old and older, starting from few matrix receipt printers, slips are gone.
(I didn't accept that large format inkjet either, CalComp something)
Overall situation with them is pretty simple, use them less than designed and they will last.
My biggest one is b/w double side HP M603, it doesn't like out dry winter air and hangs every now and then.
Color model in use is Xerox 6125N(Fuji something says Linux) with no problems.
They will last here as long as ink is available.
They are also LAN connected and printing computer count is 3.
For other uses I have two HP 1320 public cubes with one printing computer.
How much I print, I bought few cases(5*500) a bit over two years ago, can't remember exactly, some packs are still left but covid has put things down.
Don't get me wrong, I've not paid any of them more than pocket changes.
Few times I've been around when somebody is pushing shopping cart with a rejected printer, like that M603.
How long they last.
Normal OPC-belt can take maybe 20k pages, I thing that is what smallest laser chassis will last.
(6P is not the smallest)
Old Canon LBP-8 chassis(HP LJ II etc) lasted more than 100k but it had few weak spots, repairable and not expensive.
Some later iron plate chassis' lasted much longer but practically all of them had a tendency to become noisy, sooner or later.
In home environment that squeaking is unbearable and the device must go, despite the printing quality.
Silencing that noise is also practically always unpractical so manufacturers have done something right, from their perspective, for quite some time.
About migration.
It's actually much more complicated than one can think, even office environment can be challenging.
I've heard that even around here some places are still using Fax machines.
If it's Fax your customer wants then it's Fax they get.
For big corporation the situation can be as hopeless as endless chain of software robots exchanging information that nobody knows anymore.
Then there are no other options than replace the whole thing.
One other thing, support, there must be support, so everything must be paid.
Small unit can use some free software but only some, they also must be connected, and obey the rules.
An anecdote,
back in the day DEC was so software compatibility paranoid against IBM that they had to be sure.
So what they did, a 9 bit wide byte, the octal system.
One can guess how easy that was later on.
Though few generation later that may have been a good thing, for them width was nothing special.