weird print quality problem

From: Wiseguy (noone_at_all.com)
Date: 12/31/04 

Date: 31 Dec 2004 05:40:16 -0600

hey.

I recently acquired an HP LaserJet5L at a club auction. After getting
the thing home and setting it up I am able to print. It was easy enough
to setup under Windoze but cups and lprng were a total pain in the ass
to configure correctly and I ended up throwing cups off the machine and
finally got lprng to print text and raster graphics correctly...However,
griping about that isn't my main purpose here.

My problem is that text printing leaves noticable horizontal faded areas
on the paper at regular intervals. It is like the light sensitive
transfer roller in the toner cartridge is bad...But here is the kicker.
Raster graphics, either produced with ghostscript or native pcl don't
suffer the fading problem and the firmware printer status page comes out
OK. It is only when printing text that I get the annoying light areas.
It doesn't matter if I generate the text with enscript and then
translate using ghostscript or send native text to the printer. It is
always the same: faded bands of text. When I print a greyscale or
halftoned photo or line art there are no noticable fades.

What is going on here? It seems impossible to me that the text would be
lousy and the rasters would be OK if the toner cartridge needs replaced.

btw: the same thing happens in windoze.