9 Nov
2012
9 Nov
'12
6:20 p.m.
On 11/09/2012 08:41 PM, ben wrote:
The build quality for consumer crapware has dropped, but if you buy
that stuff, you get what you deserve.
I had a DEC LN01 for a long time. It was a cantankerous beast but it
was built like a tank. (I would love to have one again, if anyone has
one lying around) Today's GOOD printers are built every bit as well.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
The key thing
for Laser printing (or any page printer) is the bit image
need to exist before
the paper moves or at least be preprocessed so that the raster image
processor can fill
a "band buffer" . The Video dot rate for a DEC LN01 (xerox 12PPM
engine) was about 7mhz.
The early character only version use a 12mhz 80186 with 8089 to keep up,
The system IO
to the host was handled by the 8089. Oddly the 8PPM LN03 Ricoh based
engine was not much
slower on the video clock. In the late 80s there were two lasers often
those that were
band buffer and generally limited to text and limited graphics and a
higher priced version
that had enough ram to buffer the page so the image could be composed
before the paper
was even moved.
I think history of Time-Sharing computers had a big impact here. You needed
BIG fast page laser printer to share between users, so high speed
printer was
needed. Speed I don't think changed much over the years, but build
quality HAS dropped.