I have a LaserJet IIISi that I once had occasion to take apart because some of the magic smoke got let out. It turned out to be a blown cap. Mirabilu dictu, once I repalced the cap, the thing worked despite the damage to the pc board (it had rather eaten away some of the pc board). The relevance at the moment is that this was on one of the boards relatively far from the print engine in terms of data flow. Exchanging mail with someone about it, my correspondent said that a certain switch on another board was just what you describe - but I never got it to work at all. (And it was on a completely different board; I cannot justify this failure as due to damage from the blown cap.) /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B