This Programming Guide is intended for use in conjunction with the EPSON Standard ESC/P Reference Manual (December 1997)

CHAPTER 1 : INTRODUCTION

This section of the Programming Guide will provide a technical overview of EPSON’s Stylus Photo 870 inkjet printer to facilitate driver development.

1.1 EPSON Stylus Photo 870

The Stylus Photo 870 is a six-color inkjet printer from EPSON. The Stylus Photo 870 is targeted for home photography uses. Printouts are intended to last as long as traditional color photo lab prints, using 1440 x 720 dpi. This printer allows continuous edge-to-edge snapshots with the EPSON Digital PhotoLab Starter Kit. The starter kit includes a roll paper holder, EPSON Premium Glossy Photo Roll Paper and helpful photo software like EPSON Software Film Factory and Adobe PhotoDeluxe . The user will be capable of printing snapshots, personal photo greeting cards and bigger-than-life panoramics.

Excluding the Japanese market, this printer is sold world wide as the Stylus Photo 870.

The Stylus Photo 870 uses the Micro Piezo print head and two-cartridges. It uses one black ink cartridge and one multicolor cartridge that contains five inks. The five inks in the single multicolor cartridge are Yellow, Cyan, Light-Cyan, Magenta and Light-Magenta. All of the color inks have the same ink formulation.

The EPSON Stylus Photo 870 printer incorporates the following features:

•Six individual ink colors

•Built in Automatic Sheet Feeder (ASF)

•Built-in 8-bit bidirectional parallel interface (IEEE-1284)

•Print densities up to 1440(H) x 720(V)

•Wide range of paper types

With the Stylus Photo 870’s bi-directional interfaces and EPSON’s Remote Mode bi-directional printer control language, the host computer can obtain key printer status information.

This document doesn’t contain information for an individual ISV’s specific driver development, but does contain the new ESC/P 2 commands associated with the Stylus Photo 870’s ability to reproduce subtle tone variations. For example, commands such as: Select dot Size “ESC ( e”, Select Ink Color “ESC ( r”, and a few recently enhanced ESC/P 2 commands are included in this section of the Programming Guide.

EPSON Imaging Technology Center

Page: 7

Revision: 1

10/6/00