Fact Finding: helping people who need to know
something and don't have time to learn

A small business owner with a home-based office needed advice for dealing with a malfunctioning multi-function fax-printer-scanner: an error message indicated that a paper jam was preventing the printer from printing, but no amount of looking inside the printer revealed even the smallest scrap of jammed paper. As a small, home-based business, the dilemma revolved around pay to repair vs. pay to replace.

This is another project that took place entirely in cyberspace.

I emailed the diagrams showing how to take the printer apart to make sure there were no scraps of paper caught inside.

Then, using the Internet as my resource, I was able to determine that a ribbon cable used in this particular make and model tended to go bad and when it did, it showed these symptoms. I also found out that this ribbon cable was no longer manufactured and so could not be replaced. I described the situation and recommended replacing the unit with a different one.