Originally published at The Apochrypha. Please leave any comments there.

Well I say a new toy

The whole office has been fitted out with new printers over the weekend and they’ve caused us no end of problems but it’s amazing what a wee telnet program and some HP Printer Job Language knowledge can do.

A few websites have been posting up all you need to know to start changing the default text on the printers LCD. I cant remember off hand what model we have but with all the problems we’ve had the helpdesk guys have basically been camped out in our office since yesterday afternoon. One of my mates is one of the ISSD bods helping out and he’s been stuck trying to fix my bosses PC so he can print anything never mind the small problems everyone else is having. So when he checked the printer and found the message change from ‘Ready’ to ‘Insert Coin’ to ‘Bit wet out…’ over a period of 5 minutes he started to crack up quite literally. I reckon my arm may bruise up a peach thanks to that wee joke but it was worth it

For those that want to know how to do it…

Telnet to the the printers IP address using port 9100 and type in the following:

\e%-12345X\@PJL JOB
\@PJL RDYMSG DISPLAY=”MESSAGE HERE”
\@PJL EOJ
\e%-12345X

To reset the text you just need to turn the printer off for a few seconds then start it back up and noone knows any different.

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