SDB:Laser Printer Does Not Print Properly Or Does Not Print At All
Situation
Some laser printers are marketed as 600x600 dpi but do not have sufficient default built-in memory to actually provide this resolution. Thus, these printers may fall back to 300x300 dpi and produce an (unfitting) output four times as big. The same applies for laser printers marketed as 1200x1200 dpi or even higher resolutions which may fall back to a lower resolution in case of insufficient built-in memory.
This article is for CUPS up to version 2.x under Linux with the traditional filtering system and backends there.
The nowadays driverless printing workflow is rather different.
Procedure
There are different options to avoid or solve this problem:
- Use a lower resolution that your printer can actually print (e.g. 300x300 dpi).
- Use a simpler imaging method (e.g. plain b/w printing instead of grayscale).
- Purchase a memory expansion for your printer.
For plain b/w printing a laser printer's built-in memory should be at least 1MB for 300x300 dpi, 4 MB for 600x600 dpi, and 16 MB for 1200x1200 dpi. Grayscale printing needs much more built-in memory (up to 8 times more - i.e. 8MB for 300x300, 32MB for 600x600, and 128MB for 1200x1200) and color printing requires very much more built-in memory (see SDB:Purchasing a Printer and Compatibility).