HP Laserjet 3100 and 3150

A small laser-printer implemented as a fairly conventional looking Group-3 (analog) fax machine. The printer body has a pass-through scanner and fax keyboard attached to the front.

The hardware will work as a fax machine independently of any computer. With PC drivers the unit will act as a printer. With the extra bundled software it can scan, do OCR, fax direct from the PC and set up the fax and PC phonebooks.

One of the benefits of using a laser printer mechanism as the print mechanism in a fax machine is that it prints on plain paper rather than the thermal material common at the time this machine was launched in 1998. The 3150 followed on in 2000.

  • HP LaserJet 3100 product Model number - C3948A
  • HP LaserJet 3150 product Model number - C4256

The HP 3100 performs normally as a mono printer using a parallel interface.

These all-in-one printers date back to the 1990s and are obsolete - except that they still do the core job of fax sending and receiving perfectly well. By today's printer standards the 6 page per minute throughput is a bit of a limitation but that is faster than fax signals can handle - and faster than anyone can read.

The printers are based on a LaserJet 5L/6L type engine and some of the parts are common to both.

Note that as of 2010 HP no longer supply some of the parts. The printers are ten years old and no manufacturer goes on supplying parts forever. At the moment there are parts in distribution and compatible parts may be obtainable.

Control:

Fax type control panel with LCD display for menus, prompts and responses.

Duty Cycle:

A fairly heavy duty machine for a fax - but only light duty as a printer. Maximum duty cycle 6,000 single sided pages per month. Document scanner duty 2,500 single sided pages per month.

6 pages per minute. Copy speed also 6 ppm.

Scanner Abilities:

300dpi optical with 256 levels of gray (not colour). Scan to file ability.

Copy Abilities:

Copies at 6 pages per minute and 300 dpi. Up to 99 copies in one action. Ability to enlarge and reduce with a zoom range of 50 to 200%. Can adjust the contrast and collate.

Fax Abilities:

Able to work as a stand alone ITU Group 3 fax machine sending and receiving. Can also forward faxes to other location. Supplied software sends and receives faxes using the computer.

Analog fax abilities:

  • Standard: 203 by 98 dpi
  • Fine: 203 by 196 dpi
  • Superfine: 300 by 300 dpi (no halftone)
  • Photo: 300 by 300 dpi (halftone enabled)
  • Fax coding schemes: MR, MMR, MH, and JBIG

Modem speed 14,400 bits per second (bps)

Up to 600 dpi.

Paper Handling:

A4 / Letter

Processor:

The formatter incorporates a Motorola 68030 custom microprocessor operating at 25.2 megahertz (MHz).

Memory:

Fax memory is 2MB. The memory can be cleared using the Extended Service Menu or by removing the formatter board.

A boot ROM stores the startup sequences, commands and the demo page. Flash ROM stores the microprocessor control program. One bank of RAM is battery backed and used for parameter storage. Another 2 banks are used for temporary storage of fax, copy, scan and print data

Interface:

Parallel interface to the computer - bidirectional to ECP standard Phone line connector for an analog (POT) line. Connectors for the phone line depend on the country code.

System Compatability:

An IBM PC (or 100% compatible) 486 processor or better (or Pentium® 90 MHz processor or better for Windows NT 4.0) with a dedicated IEEE-1284 bidirectional or ECP-compliant parallel port.

16MB RAM for Windows 9x, 32MB RAM or more for Windows NT4.0 and above

30MB or more of free hard disk space.

System support is limited to the mid-1990s Microsoft products 3.1x, Windows 95, or Windows NT 4.0

Power:

100 to 127 Volts alternating current (Vac) +/-10%; 50 to 60 hertz

220 to 240 Vac +/-10%; 50 hertz

Power Consumption:

Idle 9 watts, 135 watts in continuous copy mode.

Acoustic Noise:

Sound Power Level, LWAd (1 bel = 10 decibels) 5.7 bels (B)

Sound Pressure Level,LpAm (Operator Position) 52 decibels (dB)

Sound Pressure Level, LpAm (Bystander Position) 43 dB

Consumables:

Single piece print cartridge containing the toner, fuser, OPC drum and waste toner receptacle. There is an economy mode which will save approximately 50% of the toner but this is only available via the computer print-driver.

C3906A HP Laserjet 5L/6L/3100 C3906A Original Black Toner Cartridge. Page yield 2,500 pages at 5% cover. C3906A

SI1000M Silver Reed Black Toner Cartridge MAXI (Code: SI1000M)

Fuser:

The fuser mechanism comes in two parts - a lower pressure roller and a heater. The heater comes in two versions - one for the US and Japan (120V) and the other for the rest of the world.

RG5-4681 HP Laserjet 3100/3150 (200/240v) Fuser Heating Unit RG5-4681-000CN

RG5-4678 HP Laserjet 3100/3150 ( 120V ) Fuser Heating Unit RG5-4678-000CN

RF5-2362 Pressure roller RF5-2362-000CN

Spares:

Some spares are as for the 6L which has the same print engine, others not.

Note that in January 2010 some of the parts are still available in the distribution channel but that HP no longer supply them. However there may be compatible parts available. The life of these printers may therefore be coming to an end.

Paper Feed Repair Kit for Hewlett Packard Laserjet 3100/3150 (contains Paper Pickup Assembly RG5-3486, separation pad kit RY7-5077

RG5-3486 Pickup Roller Assy for HP 3100/3150 RG5-3486

-5077 Paper Separation Kit for HP 3100/3150 RY7-5077

-5008 Printer separation pad and subpads. RY7-5008-000CN

-1951 Pickup Roller for HP 3100/3150 RG5-1951

-1699 Idler Roller for HP 3100/3150 Part Number : RB2-1699

-1534 Printer transfer roller RF5-1534-000CN life estimated at 50,000 pages.

-4688 Document scanner pickup roller assembly RG5-4688-000CN

RY7-5055 Document scanner separation pad kit RY7-5055-000CN

-4223 Document scanner feed roller and document scanner delivery roller RG5-4223-000CN

Service and Repair

There is some information on repair on the HP LJ 6L Page (here)

Copyright G & J Huskinson & MindMachine Associates Ltd 2013, 2015. Some pictures derived from HP User and Service guides. These technical pages do not constitute an offer for sale; just our knowledge at the time of writing. See the catalog. Sales pages on this Web site use cookies to store user information. We also use Google Analytics to track site usage patterns.