Mystery Laser Printer Board - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: sonnytiger
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2014, 05:28:53 pm
content: No idea where this thing is from but I'm sure someone knows.As usual, I would love it if you could answer any questions I have.Thanks for watching!

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2014, 07:16:04 pm
content: It's Mistery.Google "fiery" and you'll find the manufacturer of those large chips.It's a nice board. Worth saving those tantalum (yellow/orange) capacitors for various projects, some opams, some linear regulators I think..

author: sonnytiger
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2014, 08:18:05 pm
content: I thought it was a nice board. I did do that, put some links in the video description, I'm pretty sure it's mystery

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2014, 08:38:35 pm
content: Quote from: sonnytiger on January 29, 2014, 08:18:05 pmYeah, my bad, it's mystery. Though "mistery" is also somewhat correct, kind of like those US English vs UK English things:https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Amistery

author: pmcouto
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 29, 2014, 10:32:14 pm
content: Hi,That’s a formatter board from an HP Color LaserJet 8550 printer.Forget about finding any detailed info about those “Fiery” labeled chips – They are available to OEM printer manufacturers only…Regards,Pedro Couto

author: sonnytiger
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2014, 11:03:39 pm
content: Thanks Pedro!What exactly does the formatter board do? change the variety of formats attacking the printer into one that the printing circuitry can understand?

author: gibbled
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2014, 11:10:28 pm
content: Fiery RIP? Raster Image Processor.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 30, 2014, 09:01:41 pm
content: Formatter takes the incoming data and converts it into a massive bitmapped image which is then used to drive the laser engine that generates the image onto the drum and then to the paper. You feed in either HPGL, Postscript or even plain ASCII data into a small page buffer, then the RIP reads it, executes it in the case of HPGL and postscript, and converts it into a massive image at the native resolution of the printer, and stores it as an image in the DRAM chips. In the colour printer this needs 4 separate bitmaps for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and blacK images. Thus the 8 dimm slots for 3v3 EDO ram. Then this data is fed to the laser to modulate the brightness to generate both dithered and variable size dots, as the dithering makes the image non banded and expands the density as the laser has a limited brightness range. The data has to be sent out as an unbroken stream, as otherwise you get breaks in the printed page. That has to be matched to the printer engine very closely to get an undistorted image.Newer printers are fast enough processor wise to be able to do compression and decompression of the image in RAM on the fly so as to use less memory in the printer, and some are fast enough to generate the image in close to real time having only a couple of hundred lines of buffer ahead of the data to the laser.

author: dexters_lab
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 30, 2014, 10:16:16 pm
content: i remember Fiery was a significant name in printing, proofing etcin one of my previous jobs we had several proofing printers, some had external Fiery RIP devices connected to the printers to provide postscript support. The RIP device would take jobs, que them, raster the image and then run the printer. It meant the work was offloaded from the pc. It also meant the same file you would send to to have properly printed by another company was the same sent to your proofing printer.Printer makers also licensed the tech and integrated it.this was 10+ years ago, not sure how things have changed!?