O
nce considered an expensive luxury for any PC, especially for home or small office
systems, a printer is now virtually a necessity on any PC system. Technology has
advanced to the point that good quality, color printers are available for less
than $200,and it is common for PC sale bundles to include one.
When software was still fairly unsophisticated and applications that produced output
worth saving were few, the printer was a true luxury. Electronic spreadsheet and word pro-
cessing applications allowed the user to prepare budgets, reports, letters, and other docu-
ments prepared for the sole purpose of being physically shared. Even in today’s networked
environments, where documents can be shared and collaborated on electronically, the need
to produce a printed paper copy of a document is still a necessity for a significant portion of
documents produced on the PC. The printer has definitely become a necessity for today’s
PC user.
It is certainly a toss-up whether the modem or the printer is the next most important
peripheral device (after the monitor, of course). However, it is safe to say that these
three peripherals are the must-haves of most PCs. The printer provides a means of per-
manently saving what the monitor can only display temporarily. For visual content, the
monitor is capable of only temporarily holding its contents and only until the next vi-
sual image comes along. On the other hand, a printer’s output is a permanent record of
a visual image, drawing, chart, or document.
This chapter looks at the various types of printers commonly used with PC systems,
their best uses, how they work, and a bit of minor troubleshooting.Printer Types and Technologies
Today, a wide variety of printing mechanisms have been adapted for use with a personal
computer. However, that wasn’t always the case. Here is an overview of how the printers
used today evolved.The Evolution of the PC Printer
Over the years, the printing mechanisms used to print words and graphics on paper have
dramatically changed. Before the printer was paper and pen, the printing press, and then
the typewriter. Remington Rand developed the first dedicated computer printer in 1953
foruseontheUNIVACcomputer.Manyoftheearliestcomputersandmuchofthepunch
card equipment used in the 1950s and 1960s used specially adapted electric typewriters
as printers.Teletype Terminals
The next advancement was the Teletype terminal, or the TTY printer. It was used very
much like a keyboard and monitor are used today. The operator entered data and com-
mands through the keyboard, and the system (in this case, a mainframe computer) re-
sponded to the printing mechanism built into the TTY terminal (see Figure 17-1).(^402) PC Hardware: A Beginner’s Guide