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Phaser 780 Color Printer
Phaser 780 overview
The Phaser 780 Color Printer combines a color laser, continuous-tone print engine
with an image processor supporting Adobe’s PostScript 3 page description
language. The image processor features a bi-directional parallel interface and a
10baseT Ethernet port for host communication. Optional network adapter cards
to the image processor allow the printer to communicate on networks using
LocalTalk, Ethernet 100baseT or Token Ring protocols. The Ethernet network
card supports EtherTalk 100baseT, Novell and TCP/IP. With the Token Ring
network card, the printer supports Token Ring protocols. The network cards are
sometimes referred to as “smart cards” because each houses its own processor for
executing specific on-board protocols; only data is transferred from the installed
smart card to the printer’s image processor board. The PCL printer language is
also supported.
The printer is marketed in three versions:
The
Phaser 780 N
(Standard) comes standard with 64 Mbytes of RAM. The
printer contains 136 standard, built-in fonts. The standard Phaser 780 prints at a
resolution of 600 x 600 dots-per-inch on A and B-size media. The base printer
does not support grayscale printing.
The
Phaser 780 GN
(Graphics) features 96 Mbytes of RAM and can print at
600 x 1200 dpi. It also contains 136 fonts. The graphics printers supports 16 level
grayscale printing as well as printing oversize-B images.
The
Phaser 780 P
(Plus) features 192 Mbytes of RAM and supports the same
features as the GN printer. In addition, the Plus version Phaser 780 supports
image pipelining for greater throughput, a print collation mode, and a “check
print before proceeding with job” mode. The plus printer also feature a SCSI-
compatible interface to connect to an external hard disk drive for additional font
storage. The hard disk drive is also required for print collation of multiple copy
multi-page prints. A scanner can also be connected to the Plus printer’s SCSI port
to give the printer the ability to optically copy color images.
RAM memory in the printers can be supplemented with one or two additional 32-
, 64-, or 128-Mbyte RAM DIMMs; the maximum usable capacity is 192 Mbytes
Print speeds depend on the chosen resolution and selected media. For resolutions
of 600 x 600 (standard), in color, the printer prints at 4 A-size pages per minute
(ppm) on paper. Monochrome printing (Fast Monochrome) is at 16 ppm on paper.
Transparency film printing is always 2 ppm.
The printers support printing on A-, A4-, A5-, B-, B4, B5, SRA3, A3-, 13 x 19 in.
and Legal-sized paper from a 250-sheet tray. An optional three-tray second feeder
(called the Lower Tray Assembly) is available with additional 250-sheet standard
media trays. The printer features a built-in multi-purpose tray from which
specialty media, cardstock and envelopes can be fed. The printer also supports
manual feeding using the multi-purpose tray.
After being idle for the selected amount of time the printer switches into its
Energy Star mode where it consumes less than 45 watts of power. It “awakens”
upon receiving data at any of its ports.