Canon MX310 MFP rescued from road verge

On November 28, I posted about rescuing a HP Compaq Presario from the road verge, during local Shire annual rubbish verge pickup:

http://bkhome.org/news/201811/compaq-presario-pc-rescued-from-road-verge.html

I also mentioned that I picked up two multi-function printers, an Epson XP-400 and a Canon MX310. Both are inkjet printers, the former being a bit more modern with wifi interface, the latter with USB2 interface.

The last time that I bought an inkjet printer was about 10 years ago, and I decided "never again". The reason was, if the stupid thing was left unused for a couple of months, the cartridge nozzles became clogged and I would have to buy a new set. As I only used a printer every couple of months, this was very wasteful.

My Brother HL-2040 laser printer on the other-hand, can sit unused for for 6 months and still be good-to-go.  Which it has done, and as I print only every few months, the laser toner lasts for years. can't recall when I last changed it, um, about 5 years ago I think.

The Epson XP-400 is heavily criticized for the same failing, most reviewers here giving it one star, and from their comments it seems they would have assigned zero stars if that was allowed:

https://www.productreview.com.au/p/epson-epson-expression-home-xp-410/m/xp-400.html

Then there is the later XP-410 and XP-420:

https://www.productreview.com.au/p/epson-epson-expression-home-xp-410.html

https://www.productreview.com.au/p/epson-expression-xp-420.html

...after reading those reviews, my enthusuasm for setting up the XP-400 waned. So, what about the Canon MX310:

https://www.productreview.com.au/p/canon-pixma-mx310.html

...only one review, but he gave it 5 stars. Another good place to look is Amazon.com reviews:

https://www.amazon.com/Canon-Printer-2184B002-Discontinued-Manufacturer/product-reviews/B000V2RU0A

Anyway, onto the main purpose of this post. I cleaned up the printer with a slightly damp cloth, and it looks good:

...rescued HP Compaq Presario PC and Dell keyboard can be seen on the right side. Purchased cheap speakers from Officeworks, for AU$11.88.

The printer works! Except for one small detail that nothing prints, due to the cartridges being completely clogged.

Testing EasyOS and Quirky

Now for some bad news. Forum member 'scsijon' reported getting the infamous "filter failure" when trying to print from the latest EasyOS, version 0.9.10. So, I tried with the MX310, same error, using a CUPS+Gutenprint driver. The error log showed this:

gs: no such file or directory
(/usr/lib/cups/filter/gstoraster) stopped with status 1

Well, /usr/bin/gs does exist, it is a symlink to /usr/bin/gsc. So, I tried this:

# ln -s /usr/bin/gsc /usr/lib/cups/filter/gs

It fixed the above error, however, still get "filter failure". So fired up Quirky Xerus 8.6 on the Compaq, now printing works ...of course, have to qualify that, it goes through all the motions of printing, but getting blank pages because of the dried-up cartridges.

So, further research is required! Note, my Brother HL-2040, for which I have a foomatic ppd driver, does print from Easy. 

EDIT 20181210:
Printing from EasyOS now fixed, see:

http://bkhome.org/news/201812/cupsgutenprint-printing-fixed.html  

Tags: tech