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Tope Afuye

Cisco – 22/03/10

Chapter 14 Revision Notes

14. 1

Risks in potential safety hazards and safety procedures – Lift with bent knees, straight back. Before servicing turn off AC power and allow cooling (Print heads of dot matrix can become hot as can fuser assembly on a laser printer.) Parts of the printer can retain high voltages even after the printer has been turned off, such as the corona wire.

14. 2

Printers can connect to a computer using any of the following (Serial, Parallel, SCSI, USB, Firewire, Ethernet)

Serial – Transfer information in single bits of single cycles. Not very high transfer rates.

Parallel – Transfers information in multiple bits as a single cycle. Path is wider to allow information to or from printer. Standard for parallel is IEEE 1284. EPP and ECP are two modes of operation that allow bi-directional communication.

SCSI – SCSI 1(50-pin connector), SCSI 2 (fast SCSI – 50-pin connector), SCSI 2 (wide SCSI – 68-pin connector), SCSI 3 (fast/wide SCSI – 68-pin connector). All of these require correct cabling for ports including (DB 50, Mini DB 50, DB 68)

USB – Very common interface. Simple setup. Newer OS’ provide PnP USB support.

Firewire – a.k.a i-LINK a.k.a IEEE 1394. Allows 63 devices to be attached at a transfer speed of 800 Mbps.

Ethernet – This connects printers to be shared over a network. Requires cable compatible with existing network and the network port in printer. RJ45 most commonly used interface.

Printer drivers are software programmes that allow printers and computers to communicate with each other.

Printer Driver Installation

1. Determine the current version of the installed printer driver. Remember to select a newer version to increase functionality.
2. Search the Internet to locate the most recent version of the driver.
3. Download the driver. Follow the instructions on the website.
4. Install the driver. When activated, most driver installation programs automatically install the new driver.
5. Test the driver. To test the driver, choose Start > Settings > Printers and Faxes in Windows 2000 or Start > Control Panel > Printers and Faxes in Windows XP. Right-click the printer and choose Properties. Then choose Print Test Page. If the printer does not work, restart the computer and then try again.

Page Description Language (PDL)

This is a type of code that describes the appearance of a document in a language that a printer can understand. These speed up printing process by sending large amounts of data at one time. They also manage computer fonts.

Three common PDLs:

• Printer Command Language (PCL) – Hewlett-Packard developed PCL for communication with early inkjet printers. PCL is now an industry standard for nearly all printer types.
• PostScript (PS) – Adobe Systems developed PS to allow fonts or text types to share the same characteristics on the screen as on paper.
• Graphics Device Interface (GDI) – GDI is a Windows component to manage how graphical images are transmitted to output devices. GDI works by converting images to a bitmap that uses the computer instead of the printer to transfer the images.