Why won't HP PSC 1210 print in black?
 

Last evening I managed to get my printer working. (I used Foomatic, followed it
to the letter, and it worked!) However, it won't print in black ink. It's like
the colour cartridges got reversed or something (but that isn't the case), so
it prints in red ink whenever I try to do anything. And it works normally when
hooked up to the laptop, which is running XP.
Apparently this was a bug in previous releases of gimp-print, but downloading
the newest release should have fixed it. Yet it didn't, and now I don't know
what to do. *tears out hair in frustration*
Can anyone offer any advice?
(also, I should clarify a bit: I've been using Linux for approximately three
weeks, so I'm not fluent in a lot of the tech-speak. *g*)

Thanks in advance,
~tae

Have you tried any other applications besides Gimp Print? Try a word processor or even an editor like KEDIT. If they all print red instead of black, there may be a problem with the driver. If the WP's print black, the problem is most likley Gimp-print. Post back with the results.

It's printing red with everything I try.
I tried a couple text documents in OpenOffice, and even tried changing the font colour, and they ended up the same - red.
Same with KEdit.
You said it may be an issue with the driver?
Right now I'm willing to try anything, so that I don't have to transfer all my essays on to the laptop for printing.
Thanks,
~t.

Since it fails in several applications, and works ( the hardware ) under windoze, there has to be an issue with the way teh printer is installed ( the driver ). I'm unfamiliar with Foomatic. The only thing I can think of is to suggest you go to www.linuxprinting.org and look for a solution there. Possibly someone with Gentoo experience can help.

BTW, does testpage work or fail ( print red ). That may also be a clue.

HP's take on it
 

I asked HP about this (in general), and this is the reply I got from them:

"I am sorry to inform that there is no other option other than removing
the cartridge, setting in Tools to print using one cartridge and then
printing. I regret for the inconvenience caused.

In the earlier all-in-one units that have the print in gray scale option
the color cartridge was used by the printer in conjunction with the
black cartridge to produce the gray scale output. One of the colors in
the color cartridges would deplete and the color cartridge would become
empty. Since those units could not operate on a single cartridge,
customers had to purchase a new color cartridge even if they always used
the print in gray scale option.

This increased the maintenance cost to our customers. Therefore, the
new units(including PSC 1200) are more intelligent than earlier
all-in-ones and designed in such a way that they can operate on a single
cartridge.

They also offered some generic ways to try and work around it, mostly just talking about converting everything manually to grayscale before printing.

I removed the color cartridge and it prints in B/W only that way.

-blacktw

You could also try the HP OfficeJet Linux driver with CUPS, as I do for my PSC-1350. They use the same driver and from what I can remember aren't too different from each other.

It's pretty heavy going, but with an ample supply of a caffeine-based beverage and lots of patience, you may have (as I do), flawless Linux printing and scanning.

The only thing I can't stress enough is read through everything, :study: then read it again :D

HTH
Baldrick