High-quality color inkjet office printers - design of HP DeskJet 1200C and HP DeskJet 1200C/PS printers - Technical

Hewlett-Packard Journal, Feb, 1994 by Douglas R. Watson, Hatem E. Mostafa

The other Deskjet 1200C articles in this issue describe in greater detail the design solutions arrived at by the seam teams. The remainder of this article describes the features and capabilities of the HP Deskjet 1200C printer and the HP Deskjet 1200C/PS PostScript printer.

Deskjet 1200C Features

The Deskjet 1200C and 1200C/PS printers (Fig. 1) are the most advanced HP Deskjet printers, building on the features of earlier Deskjet printers and adding features that are new to the family.

Using a new family of inkjet print cartridges, the new printers print black text with a resolution of 600 by 300 dots per inch (dpi) and HP Resolution Enhancement technology (Fig. 2). Print speeds are six pages per minute for black text and one to two minutes per page for color (Fig. 3). The design duty cycle is 8,000 pages per month.

The new printers raise inkjet technology to a new level of print quality, producing sharp, black text and a spectrum of colors on plain paper using four new 104-nozzle print cartridges--cyan, magenta, yellow, and black---with new ink formulations. To ensure the blackest, sharpest text and maximum graphics quality, the black cartridge contains pigmented ink. The cartridges have large-capacity ink reservoirs and ink-level indicators.

A PostScript Level 2 Module is available to add PostScript language capability to the Deskjet 1200C printer. The module provides the same PostScript Level 2 functions as the Deskjet 1200C/PS printer. Both the Deskjet 1200C/PS and the Deskjet 1200C with the PostScript module provide autoswitching between interfaces and between the PCL 5 and PostScript languages.

Drivers for the new printers are available for Microsoft(R) Windows and Apple Macintosh environments.

LaserJet Printer Compatibility

The new printers are the first Deskjet printers that are HP LaserJet compatible. The Deskjet 1200C shares with the LaserJet 4 such features as:

* Color PCL 5 language including the HP-GL 2 graphics language

* 45 internal scalable typefaces--35 Intellifont and 10 TrueType[TM]

* HP Resolution Enhancement technology

* Interchangeable scalable and bitmapped typeface cartridges

* Interchangeable SIMM memory and HP JetDirect cards that are also compatible with the HP LaserJet IIISi printer

* RISC-based processing

* High-speed Centronics parallel port

* Automatic switching between Centtonics and network interfaces through optional HP JetDirect cards

* Automatic switching between PCL 5 and optional PostScript language

* Support for explicit language switching as found on the LaserJet IIISi printer.

Acknowledgments

We wish to acknowledge the engineers, scientists and managers who throughout this program dedicated themselves to delivering to HP customers the highest value possible. Through their efforts traditional technical and performance barriers fell rapidly, making possible a new class of Deskjet printer for the office.

References

1. Hewlett-Packard Journal, Vol. 39, no. 4, August 1988, pp. 6-56.

2. Hewlett-Packard Journal, Vol. 39, no. 5, October 1988, pp. 51-98.