I hear that.
Also got an old HP 1050, "tested", sold as-is. Need a new lamp, at the minimum (Low Illumination error). luckily that one was dirt cheap.
back to the G4212...I loaded the new firmware, still no dice. Same error 1036.
a couple weeks ago, I would turn it on (before I got a copy of chemstation), and status light would be yellow, indicating a 'not ready' state. then, I turned it on one day, and the light was red. So the board must've been fine a few weeks ago, and there haven't been any power outages.
prior to getting chemstation, I did try to route signal from analog out into another CDS, and may have dirtied the flowcell from a couple sample injections, I don't know if that has anything to do with it. I've already flushed it several times since.