Check how the pickup rollers are mounted -- the HP LJ 2100/2200/2300 have a repair UNfirendly design which is hard to install the first time correctly, or first timers often break. I had one (2100 version) with ~250k pages in high school, and it was broken on Tray 2 before I got it due to the horrible design this was known for (as well as age not helping) so I had to use Tray 1 for everything. It was not fun, but I made it work because it beat feeding an inkjet ink every other week because they were far more expensive to run when I could forego color when I had working color ink for the inkjet (and it was getting hard to find ink for the 842c, so it was a huge upgrade). It's possible it was broken before you got it due to user error that went undisclosed, or just broke due to time. The design HP used in these is their kryptonite :/. Break it... GOODBYE. Can't get the parts and if you somehow DO find it, it's just as brittle.
Eventually, it had a formatter board death after like 270-280k pages so I got it towards the end, but free is free; especially back then. These days I'd take something with that much use, but as a condition, it has to come with a nicer printer and it's just a bonus that doesn't need a $$$ maintenance kit, expensive fuser or color laser with an ITB you can't easily buy. Based on those rules, it eliminated MOST color lasers because they fail there a lot unless the ITB is lifetime like some of the 5-7-year-old Lexmarks which are JUST being decommed (but most have the drum issue). Only a few make the cut with color, B/W is easy because clone drums are like litter, or rebuild kits are available. The page count would make it would be something I can toy around with when I can get a cheap test toner and throw some copy paper in it, and basically just use it as a bulk convenience printer knowing it's high anyway and putting 3-4k lazy pages on a 80-100k page printer as acquired is NOT a big deal. But would I pay for it with heavy use? No, but I'll rehome it to save it from the landfill and work with it if it's viable cost wise.
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@oldturkey03 Got it. I suspect the rollers are shot or improperly mounted... These are NOT fun to swap on Tray 2, unlike modern units which I still consider "good", so essentially all units which are reasonably new that also predate the M402 and color DRM machines (as in low PC pre-DRM).
That said, I'd still swap the rollers on a 50k+ page Pro 400 or a 150k+ page machine from the chipless era (or at least lack of DRM); but I'm not just grabbing one well run Pro 400 -- I need to make it worth the trip (and potential back pain). Can't hurt something with 150k pages as a bulk unit on the clock much worse if it's a bonus grab ;).
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