kug-ch05 Page 2 Thursday, March 6, 1997 4:47 PM

U s i n g t h e H a r d D r i v e / D o w n l o a d i n g F o n t s

Hard Drive Considerations

Print/DiskSpooling

State Saving

If you install the optional hard drive on the LN17 printer, it will significantly increase the amount of memory available for processing jobs and storing downloaded information (such as fonts and macros).

The hard drive can function as a print spooler when you set the Disk Spooling option to On. With disk spooling enabled, the hard drive simultaneously accepts print jobs from all enabled ports, then processes and prints them in the order in which they are first received.

Disk spooling is useful for both standalone and networked systems:

•When the printer is busy processing a long or complex print job, successive print jobs from the same or other ports can be accepted by the printer and spooled to the hard disk. Accordingly, the printer will free the computer that is submitting print jobs so it can subsequently switch to tasks other than printing.

•While most networks provide spooling outside the printer, spooling to a disk inside the printer will remove network related overhead. Accepting print jobs from a disk in the printer is more efficient than accepting print jobs one at a time from networks.

The number of jobs that can be spooled is limited by the amount of hard drive space available. Also, spooling from networks will not be supported for AppleTalk jobs and from ports where DS/P (Document Services for Printing) is enabled. The DECprint Supervisor (DCPS) for OpenVMS software does not support spooling.

When the State Saving option is set to On, the printer saves downloaded information when it switches between the PCL and PostScript PDLs (Printer Description Language). Installing a hard drive increases the amount of memory the printer has available for saving downloaded fonts and macros when it switches between PDLs.

5-2❖ L N 1 7 a n d L N 1 7 p s P r i n t e r s U s e r G u i d e