On 10/11/2012 01:15, allison wrote:
Actually no. To do that you need to be able to process the data
rapidly enough to lay down dots
as the drum rotates.
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 am a tech at a company called XEIKON. We manufacture color digital
presses..
We print on rolls of paper of upto 50cm (20inch) at 1200DPI at speeds of
19 meters a min (about 60ft/min??). The presses are 5 colour on both
sides..
Being roll fed presses we cant stop the press and wait for the data,
LOTS of FPGA's are required to keep up the data stream.
We are low end industrial, some of the expensive stuff like Kodaks
Prosper of course need lots more....
Roger