DeskJet 970 Cxi: black and empty page issues

[Florin Andrei]

Using an HP DeskJet 970 Cxi that I got for free (salvaged), connected via LPT to a print server running Fedora Core 4 and CUPS-1.1.23

I did various tests:
- print a test page from the print server itself
- print over the network from an Ubuntu 7.04 workstation
- print over the network from a Windows XP workstation (via Samba)

No matter what, there are always two problems:

1. The black is not dark enough. It's more like a dark gray. My old Epson Stylus Photo 780 which expired recently was definitely capable of printing true black.
Is that a setting somewhere in the driver?

2. Always, the printer will eject one more page after it finishes printing the job. So there's always a blank page at the top that I have to put back in the tray.

CUPS is using the hpijs driver, which is the recommended one.