Printer help?

[Tony Duell]

> 
> Does the collective list wisdom include repair hints for an HP LaserJet
> IIISi?  I have one.  Yesterday, I turned it on, same as a zillion times

Alas I've only worked on series 1 (CX) and 2 (SX) printers. But those I 
have _worked_ on (as in totally taken apart, investigated, reassembled -- 
without the manuals).

> before, and it didn't come up normally; it was making an odd ticking
> noise.  I went to see what was up and smelled that unpleasant smell

Maybe an SMPUS that's tripping due to a short on the secondary side 
somewhere. Could, of course, be a short in the load (e.g. motor driver, 
decoupling capacitor)

> that usually means the magic smoke has been let out of something.  I
> turned it off immediately and have been spending the last hour or so
> trying to figure out how to disassemble it to find out what's fried
> (and try to estimate how user-replaceable it may be).

The SX is _very_ modular and comes apart into official FRUs in about 10 
minutes. The CX is somewhat worse, some of the sctions come out in bits. 
None-the-less these are not that hard to work on, so I assume the IIISi 
is not too bad either. The outer casing should come off easily when 
you've found the right screws....

-tony