HP CB438-69002 Formatter for the HP P4014N Printer etc.

top-right-photo

HP Part CB438-69002 is the formatter for the P4014 in all models except the base model - all those with network capability. The printer's capabilities, features (and limitations) are determined by firmware.

The other printer in the series, the P4014 uses CB437-69002. The difference is that CB438-69002 board implements the network circuit; chip positions are blank on the CB437-69002.

The formatter is the circuit board in the right rear of the printer. The formatter coverRC2-5757(P4014) slides off and the formatter enclosure lid swings open for memory upgrades. The whole formatter enclosure is removable, held by two thumb screws at the rear. A 48 way header (3x16) leads to an Intermediate board, then a 32 way FFC connector links the formatter to the DC Controller RM1-4582. The CB438-69002 is the circuit board within the enclosure. Brokers selling used items might also provide the metalwork (what else would they do with bits of tin) but the part number seems to apply to the circuit board. The enclosure says P/N CB508-00001 Product of Hungary It also has the legend Assy CB508-60101.

The board has a USB square connector at one corner and the network connector at the other. The 32 way formatter to DC controller link is on another. There is a large black connector for one EIO slot. Some memory in installed at the top edge of the board and nearby there is a single 144 pin DIMM slot. The board is dominated by the large processor chip. This was believed to be a Coldfire but bears the legend PMC RM2400B-PGC and HP 1825-0265 - so its a proprietary HP chip. Underneath the processor is a flash chip. There is a battery for the real-time clock (the user guide says its a carbon monofluoride lithium type). There are also a couple of headers for add-ons. The main position for options is a USB connector for adding flash pens containing fonts, forms or special applications.

CB438-69002

The formatter is responsible for turning the print language received by the interface into the image that will be displayed on the page. The DC controller supervises the workings of the printer, operating the motors and solenoids. The printer mechanisms can operate in a basic test mode if the DC controllertest buttonis pressed.

The formatter is a moderately powerful processor combined with some circuitry to support print language interpretation and rasterisation. We have very limited information about what happens within the formatter. Its a proprietary chip running at 540Mhz If it's PMC we might expect it to be MIPS based but HP's brochure 4AA1-8014EEE says "Motorola Coldfire V5e at 540MHz". The base model has 96MB RAM but the P4014N model and higher have 128MB and a 144 pin DDR2 DIMM slot.

installing DIMM

Experience suggests formatters are unlikely to go wrong. Like most printer processors it is not greatly under stress and it self-tests at startup.

The network port is built into the formatter on all models except the P4014 base model. The network port incorporates a green link light which should be on when there is a live connection and a yellow activity light which will intermittently flash - or rapidly flash when the printer is receiving traffic.

The formatter has a heartbeat LED just below the built-in network port. The heartbeat light blinks rapidly at power on and then settles to flashing at intervals of about four seconds. If there is no formatter light something is wrong.

The only reason to look in the formatter enclosure of a P4014 is normally to add RAM to the socket. Note the wild patterns of the tracks - done to keep parallel signal timing correct.

If the formatter is changed with a used replacement then the SERVICE MENU should be used to record the page count, maintenance count, service ID and serial number of the printer.

If a new formatter is used the existing memory DIMM should be installed on the new formatter. Turn the power on and wait for 5 minutes after the printer gets to the ready state.

If there does seem to be an issue remove any expansion memory and try the printer without it. Also try removing the entire formatter and use theengine testbutton (in a small hole in the right side of the printer) to verify that the DC controller works properly.

The formatter is designed to be replaced rather than repaired. The most likely fault is connector mis-seating either for the whole enclosure or for an accessory within it. Other possible faults are capacitor or solder failure. We have certainly seen a rise in soldering faults and network sockets do tend to be vulnerable. Before buying a formatter look for dry joints on the existing one.

The only parts likely to be involved in a problem with the formatter are the DC Controller as already suggested and perhaps the power supply RM1-4578. It may be an idea to check the voltages with a multimeter before concluding a fault is related to the formatter. Any accessories like additional memory or USB font memory plugged into the formatter might also be suspect.

HP Information

Checking HP Partsufer in August 2013 gave

CB438-69001 Formatter (main logic) board - For network models only
CB438-69002 Kit-formatter replacement 04.0
CB438-69002N Kit-formatter replacement 04.0
HWP-CB438-67901 Network formatter Asy. Kit (Ne
HWP-CB438-69001 Network Formatter Asy Kit
HWP-CB438-69002 Kit-formatter replment 2010072

...which suggests there have been a couple of revisions. A specific query gave

CB438-69002 - Kit-formatter replment 20100725 04.080.7

... and it lists the P4014N, P4014DN, P4015N, P4015DN, P4015TN, P4015X, P4515N, P4515TN, P4515X and P4515XM printers (the description is disappointing but the list is correct).

Icecat gave two EAN/UPC for CB438-69002 when I looked -
CB438-69002 = EAN/UPC 5704327718994 classified as a motherboard - product views 94 and
CB438-69002EXC with neither code nor category and no product views.

There are several varieties of the CB438 as noted above.

The CB438-69002 fits the P4014, P4015 and P4515 in all versions except the P4014 base model with no network capability. What happens if you fit CB438-69002 into a non network version of the printer that shipped with CB437-69002 we don't know (we suspect it will work). It isn't an affordable route to getting a network printer. Buy a print-server instead.


Web Research

A Google query on the code CB438-69002gave a response About 3,380 results very largely a list of vendors:

Partshere $250.90 new and $163.08 refurb, partsurfer.hp.com - neither price nor information, eBay (pcbaby1124) US $200.00, Sparepartswarehouse refurb $228.89 (new) $303.56, FastPrinters $274.18, renewcomputer (refurb) $125.00, Amazon ad 1 used from $150.00 (with a wrong pic), printertechs $298.00, Officelink-inc (same wrong pic as Amazon) $189.95, Cdw call for price, Pcm $246.99, Printscancopyfax $185.00, Dabs £197.02, Amazon (Stuff-UK) £196.26, Shop.bt £197.02, Hpshop.ie €202.33, Konica-minolta.printermalls $358.75, Feedroller (refurb) $158.95, Idealo (stuff-uk) £196.26, Newfuser $258.82, Laserpros no price, fghghf4s.blogspot (blog removed), Databazaar $186.40, Morecomputers£150.88, eBay (mfg-outlet) £181.06, eurieka.ie (product not seen), techpartswarehouse (refurb)$185.00, hytecrepair (no price), icecat.us no price, computerexchangeltd $202.16, and memory4less (refurb) $243.84 dicounted from $304.80 ... ......

Prices noted are for a new item without tax. The list is as encountered. We haven't done a currency conversion - half of our readers are outside the UK and are more interested in dollar prices. You may get the general picture - page after page of catalog entries with no information beyond what HP Partsurfer or the distributor lists say.

Other Research

There is a significant amount of interest in this part in distributor lists with five distributors listing it and all having some stock. This contrasts with the CB437-69002 which seems to have excited the interest of some eastern producers whilst this does not. Almost all the vendors listed above were sharing one picture.

CB438-69002

Fitting Intructions

The formatter cage literally just slides into place (well that is how it is designed, it isn't always quite that easy). The part as supplied seems to be just a board if it is new, although pictures imply refurbed units usually include the cage. A replacement formatter requires use of the SERVICE menu to set information from the old formatter if possible (of course, if the old formatter died without leaving a configuration page the only things that can be set are guesses, the cold reset paper size and the serial number from inside the cartridge lid). A new formatter requires a 5 minute wait at power on whilst the NVRAM updates. Any DIMM from the discarded formatter might also need to be fitted - it seems that the P4014 does not have firmware on a DIMM as earlier printers did but there may be early versions that do. Changing the DC controller as well requires the formatter to be changed first. See the Service Manual section Re-installation notes, formatter. Note that the formatter and any DIMM are electrostatically sensitive - use protective measures and at the least touch a grounded surface before touching electronic components.

For a supposedly user changeable part the service manual suggests difficulties - bits of the printer operating system get copied. It is probably wise to get the manual. Search online for Part number: "CB506-91004" Edition 1, 8/2008. Note that the manual could be out of date. We repeat - changing the formatter is not a frequent procudedure. Problems that seem to be the formatter such as error 49 are much more likely to be bad firmware, settings, drivers or PSU than a hardware issue in the formatter.

The "formatter" in a laser printer is responsible for turning print-language instructions into the page raster.

Laser printers make up the page by pinpoints of light hitting the photoconductive drum inside the cartridge. The laser scanner contains a semiconductor laser quite like those used as pointers - but a bit more powerful, infra-red and in the P4014 series dual-beam. This is scanned by a polygon mirror and optics aim it at the drum.

At 300 doi an 11x8 inch printed area contains 300*8*300*11=7,920,000 picture elements or pixels, which is fractionally under a megabyte of data. Early laser printers like Xerox PARC's "EARS" used a minicomputer andd clever electronics to handle page layout. When the Apple LaserWriter launched in 1985 it had 1.5 megabytes of RAM and a 12MHz Motorola 68000 processor to handle page layout and the complexities of the PostScript print language. This made LaserWriter significantly more expensive than HP's LaserJet, which made do with a more affordable 8MHz 68000, 128 kilobytes of memory and the PCL language - which limited it to text and postage-stamp sized pictures. Laserwriter was used for graphics design; LaserJet for correspondence.

In the late 1990s the power of processors streaked ahead as chip designers leaned to run at clock rates in the hundreds of megahertz. Memory prices fell in accordance with Moores Law so that multi-megabyte chips cost a dollar or so. However the job of formatting a page did become a bit more difficult because

  • the demands made of print rose - at 1200dpi a page an A4 has 16 megabytes of data and at a page a second there isn't much time to work on it.
  • networked printers need to work on a job whilst queuing others.

Formatting has not quite become a trivial job but it isn't the problem it once was.

Supply Situation

This kind of device normally has one global manufacturer. It seems unlikely that a compatible manufacturer would attempt to make a component of this complexity and small market profile. It would be difficult to tool up and get the chips and boot firmware (but easy to get the major run-time stuff from HP's updates). Almost all the parts available are probably refurbs although the people selling them do not always make that clear and they seem to be aiming for the same price around $200 as HP new spares often seem to be selling for.

We are told by various people that HP original spares are now very often actually clean, tested refurbished material but it is obviously difficult to investigate this.

However in this case there may be a motivation to make compatible devices. The P4014 sold for around $600 whilst the P4015 sold for more like $1200 and the P4515 was more expensive still. The essential difference is the formatter and the firmware. One company (Metrofuser) were / are selling a replacement formatter able to print at the full 62 page per minute rate. (See here.

It is also apparently possible to involuntarily upgrade a P4014 as someone mentions on the fixyourownprinter forum.

In August 2013 these parts were listed as new by four UK distributors, all holding some stock. Three distributors had a couple of items in stock in June 2015.

Refurb parts were also listed by UK distributors at a lower price than the somewhat adventitious prices noted amongst the web-vendors above. That remained true in 2015.

The formatter can be physically replaced quite easily - the service manual suggests it is a user replaceable part although they don't usually have a service manual to read the procedure. It is also quite easy to be sure a problem is formatter related - if the printer performs engine test correctly but won't respond to any ordinary print that suggests so. Nevertheless we don't think demand for the part will be high.

We can provide formatters in new and refurb form. The price is expected to be between £70 and £100 for refurb and £150 or so new.

These are guideline prices; with items like this prices have to change with distribution lists - see the catalog. Stock numbers in the UK seem to indicate intermittent call for the part. Prices of refurbed units are likely to shift dramatically with supply and demand. The P4014 series are 8 years old now and increasing numbers will be moving from corporates to brokers.