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CompTIA A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide

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mirror, must be moved back and forth. The toner must be evenly distributed,

and the fuser assembly must squish the toner into the paper. Finally, the paper

must be kicked out of the printer and the assembly must be cleaned to prepare

for the next page.

More sophisticated laser printers enable duplex printing, meaning they can

print on both sides of the paper. This is another mechanical function with a

dedicated duplexing assembly for reversing the paper.

EXAM TIP Be sure you are familiar with laser printer components,

including the imaging drum, fuser assembly, transfer roller, pickup rollers,

separation pads, and duplexing assembly. The CompTIA A+ 1001 exam

objectives refer to the separate pads; don’t get tripped up if you see it worded

this way.

All of these functions are served by complex gear systems. In most laser

printers, these gear systems are packed together in discrete units generically

called gear packs or gearboxes. Most laser printers have two or three

gearboxes that you can remove relatively easily in the rare case one of them

fails. Most gearboxes also have their own motor or solenoid to move the

gears.

All of these mechanical features can wear out or break and require service

or replacement. See the “Troubleshooting Printers” section, later in this

chapter, for more details.

System Board Every laser printer contains at least one electronic board. On

this board is the main processor, the printer’s ROM, and the RAM used to

store the image before it is printed. Many printers divide these functions

among two or three boards dispersed around the printer (also known as sublogic

boards, as seen back in Figure 26-10). An older printer may also have

an extra ROM chip and/or a special slot where you can install an extra ROM

chip, usually for special functions such as PostScript.

On some printer models, you can upgrade the contents of these ROM

chips (the firmware) by performing a process called flashing the ROM.

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