HP Original Cartridges
Reliable Remanufactured Cartridges
One of the merits of the P4014 against a new printer is the low cost of good re-manufactured cartridges.
At the moment we don't sell in the US, but we hope to soon
Error Message 55 for HP P4014, P4015 and P4515 Series Printers.
The DC controller is the microprocessor immediately concerned with the printer motors and sensors. A one-off failure that recovers when power is cycled is likely to be an obscure issue in firmware. A persistent error could be PSU or the actual DC controller. The DC controller has a self-test button that should print stripes if it is working properly.
55.XX.YY DC CONTROLLER ERROR ERROR
55 DC Controller Error implies that the DC controller has failed some self test or crashed. What HP refer to as a "DC controller" is also known as an engine controller on some printers. It is the processor that controls the motors, and high voltage units, reads the sensors and in this printer works the control panel. It does almost everything except format the page. Naturally that is left to the formatter which is generally regarded as a more powerful processor.
The DC controller board has a forest of wiring converging on it and it is naturally very busy when printing is in progress. In terms of implementation it is a microprocessor running firmware so in principle it could crash just like any other. It will have some sort of supervisory time-out interrupt, watchdog or heartbeat function (as does the formatter) but that isn't made explicit in a heartbeat light. Both formatter and DC controller probably exchange heartbeat clocks. Few if any details of how the DC controller works are released so we can't fully know what is going on.
The DC controller also gets information about the status of other components, such as clock signals from fans, motors and some power supply components. If one of these components fails it should show the correct error on the control panel and send the right signal to the formatter to be forwarded to the computer. Some of the conditions are pretty rare and unlikely to be seen when a printer is in beta-testing so they may not get correctly reported. This was certainly true of the fan errors in the LJ-P4014 (it reported the wrong fan) and fuser faults; the printer ignored jobs or went slowly.
Although most HP printers share the "55" DC controller error they don't all work in the same way. In some printers the formatter deals with the control panel so their manuals may tend to say something along the lines of "Internal communication problem" and "the DC Controller is not communicating with the formatter".
HP say about the "55 error":
alternates with
55.XX.YY DC CONTROLLER ERROR To continue turn off then on
and recommend
Remove any third-party memory or USB device, and then turn the product off and then on.
Remove and then reinstall the formatter.
If the error persists, remove the formatter and perform an engine test using the hidden button in the side of the printer. If the engine test page fails to print, replace the DC controller. If the engine test page prints, replace the formatter.
Although HP don't mention it in the brief excerpt above both the DC controller and formatter depend on stable voltages from the power supply. A one-off error 55 would not suggest a power supply problem but a string of them might - a processor cannot perform correctly if the power supply is unstable. Meter the power rails on the DC controller. We might expect bad mains to also trigger 50.2 and 50.3 errors so if those are also in the error log that would be a hint.
Remedies
As suggested the DC controller is capable of crashing due to exceptional events not seen before and hopefully the fault will clear when the power is cycled. If it doesn't try an engine test. Remove any expansion memory and additional USB devices and see if the fault clears. It seems possible for this fault to be the formatter rather than the DC controller. As HP suggest, try removing the formatter and press the engine test button without it present. The engine test prints a rudimentary pattern of fine stripes but if it works it proves the DC controller and virtually all of the printer mechanisms work. Does the formatter heartbeat light behave normally?
If you have several printers the obvious move is to swap DC controllers and see if the fault moves with the item. Although there are a lot of cables to swap the plugs are mostly polarised and coloured to minimise the risk of error so it isn't actually a difficult job. Take precautions against static discharge.
Web Research
I tried querying Google with P4015 "55 ERROR"
in quotes and got a suggestion of About 300 results
; implying a rare event.
- fixya page for 55 errors. Very little relevant at present.
- mj-printers.com This is a reasonable list, but comes higher up in search than might be expected on grounds of information, and its more than a bit out of date.
- charter.net another search engine favourite that is depressingly out of date.
- rhinotek PDF page - another search engine favourite that is out of date.
- electronicwerkstatt.de and yet another list of tired old laserjet 4 faults.
- www2.hp.com Color LaserJet 4600 and 4650 Series Numerical Printer Messages.
- fixyourownprinter HP P3005 Formatter card problems - so not directly relevant to the query. But an interesting history of Toshiba NAND Flash problem on P3005 boards.
- fixyourownprinter again but it got a persistent proxy error.
- helpowl responding to a Laserjet 5100 Fuser Error with fragments culled from the HP PCL/PJL reference. The page is stuffed with irrelevant links and pointless download buttons. Arguably we should help make helpowl better - but it isn't an attractive environment. The graphically duller but more solid environment of fixyourownprinter is more attractive to us.
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 catalogue. Sales pages on this Web site use cookies to store user information. We also use Google Analytics to track site usage patterns.