Hi, Matt.  There is a lot of 'teasing' from me in the below.  We were
talking about - -

 MM> The history:  About three years ago the LJIII was working fine, then
 MM> got moved to my dealer's home when they sold their 'storefront'.  A
 MM> year later he thought he could sell it, but it only gave a
"50" series
 MM> error code.  I tore it all apart in his wife's living room over a
 MM> course of two weeks and after finally getting 12 layers deep got to the
 MM> main circiut board and found three leaky caps.  Replaced those as well
 MM> as several corroded traces, got it all back together and it worked!  A
 MM> 'sale' at that time was no longer an option,

Hee.  I've only been married to 'my first wife' since 1966, but I think-
After 2 weeks of that in his wife's living room, your Dealer should have
realized his sweet wife was by then _completely_ pissed at the both of
you, and he should have sold it at his very next opportunity.

 MM> so it spent the next two years in a hall closet.

It wasn't in that hall closet for 2 years if you add up the timing of
your above  - your dealer made a big mistake!  I'll bet all the time it
was there, his sweet wife was plotting revenge, and as you tell later,
she got it, big time.

 MM> Two weeks ago he had another potential 'sale' for it, and we couldn't
 MM> find it! Seems last summer his wife got on a health kick, and decided
 MM> she wanted her bicycle in that closet instead of way out in the
 MM> backyard shed. We found the printer in the shed, stored on its side!

That there health kick _may_  have let her grow some _big_ muscles, as
she somehow got it out into the shed, while you had to  get help to get
it out of the back of your car. But I'll wager she just gave a coca cola
or two to a couple of local teenagers, and got them to tote it back to
the shed, and told them to just dump it there, on its side no matter to
her.

But OUCH! for the printer being stored on its side - - did toner spill
all over the place?

 MM> Brought it back in, and nothing but error messages galore.  He put in a
 MM> new cartridge, and after blowing the whole thing out, shaking, kicking,
 MM> re-seating, etc., it was left with only the "Paper Jam"
message, but
 MM> there was no paper in it!  After an hour of that, he finally said he
 MM> didn't want that #{at}$%$%&^%&**(%$ piece of {at}#$$%^% anywhere within his
 MM> sight, and took it outside and put it in my car.

Let me guess - -  his sweet wife was then back in the kitchen fixing
some coffee for the valiant tech-types, or nearby ostensibly watching
TV, and listening, and smiling quietly to herself, and thinking - -
Aahhh, Sweet Revenge!!!

 MM> Well, I couldn't get it out of the car without help, so I rode around
 MM> for a week with it in the back seat until one day my daughter was home
 MM> at the same time I got there, and had her help.  Put it in the
 MM> basement, connected it up, installed the Win98SE driver(s), and it
 MM> asked "Do you want to print a test page", hit
"Yes", and printed a
 MM> perfect test page on both the letter and legal trays.

 MM> I guess it was tired of resting in the shed on its side, and just
 MM> wanted to go for a ride!   :-)

Just a theory -  maybe some of this vintage laser printers had moisture
sensors in there like some of the older copy machines - - wouldn't work
until dried out to the satisfaction of the sensor. Shed maybe too damp,
and in the car maybe warmth helped dry it out enough.

 MM> The HP website did give several warnings about "Paper Jam Switches"
 MM> that often stick, and the bouncing in the car might have unstuck
 MM> something. .................

Maybe, but I suspect a lower humidity environment than out in the shed
was a big contributor to its apparent self-healing.

 JH> Did your test print come out OK?
 MM> They were perfect, as it has a new cartridge.  (see above)

 MM> As in your case, I normally only print two pages per month,

I don't do heavy printing, but I do a good bit more printing than 2 pgs
per month. After you get it to working, you may find that you use it
more also. For example, for me, it works very well for printing out
selected *.pdf pages from mainboard manuals, showing the jumpers and
such. Pretty good at printing out webpage contents while online, also.

Good luck, and even if you bump your average printouts _way_ up to 10
pages per week or so,  since BIR the cartridge is rated for 4K pages at
5% ink coverage, 400 weeks is knocking on 8 years, so you shouldn't have
to worry about having to buy yourself a toner refill kit any time soon.

- - -  JimH.

... Roadkill?! Heck, Jim, lets go back- that critter is still _alive_ -Bubba
--- MultiMail/MS-DOS v0.32