A+ Core 1 study notes on Printers and Cables

A+ Certification : 220-1001

Memory  |  Display Adapters & Monitors   |  Floppy,CD-ROM & Hard Disk  |  CPU  |  Keyboard & Power Supply  |  Printers & Cables

Networking  |  Operating System  |  Computers  |  Motherboard  |  Security  |  Miscellaneous

Printers and cables:

Laser printers:

The following are the 6 steps in the ElectroPhotographic (EP) print process of Laser Printer:

Problems associated with laser printers and probable causes:

Impact printers are capable of printing multipart forms, since they can give necessary impact to print to multiple forms simultaneously.

ECP (Extended Capability Port) has less control overhead and best suited for transferring large chunks of data, such as between the computer and laser printer.

InkJet Printers is the generic name given for contactless printing using ink. Friction feed is most commonly used with laser printers, and Inkjet printers.

Printer parallel ports come in the following varieties:

The port that a printer is using can be found by going to Control Panel -> Printers and right click on appropriate printer. Choose Ports tab to view the port (like COM1, COM2, USB001, etc.) that the printer is using.

Cable lengths:

RJ – cables:

The widely used interface cables have the following pin count:

Ultra IDE cable has 80 wires, and handles better speeds compared to IDE cable with 40 wires. The additional wires are introduced to reduce noise and thereby improving speed

Thin co-axial and thick co-axial cables have conductive grounding sheath surrounding the center conductor. Therefore, the electromagnetic interference (EMI) is significantly less.

Cat 6 cabling is recommended for Gigabit Ethernet networking.

Centronics cable, used for parallel printing will have a male DB-25 connector at one end and a female 36 pin connector at the other end.

When communicating across a serial cable, the most probable cause that the screen is dumping garbled characters is that the communication settings are not correct. Check the speed, parity, start/stop bits etc. If this is all correct, then you need to check the cable. Check whether you need a straight / cross cable, and the pin connections.

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