LaserWriter Pro 630: How Memory is Allocated

I have a LaserWriter Pro 630 printer with 8MB (megabytes) of memory. When I select my printer in the Chooser and click on Printer Info to see how much memory is available, only 2.3MB is free. Note that the LaserWriter Pro 810 has just been turned on and no fonts are downloaded.

What happened to the remaining 5.7MB of memory? How is the rest of my LaserWriter Pro 630's memory allocated?

The remaining 5.7MB of memory is used for a variety of things, although most of it is allocated to a frame buffer where the actual page is imaged.

Since legal-size (8.5 by 14 inches) is the largest available page size, the memory required for a legal-sized page can be calculated by multiplying the total imageable area (8.5 by 14) by the highest vertical and horizontal resolution in dots-per-inch (600 by 600). This calculation comes out to roughly 5MB.

The 2.3MB of "free" memory is used for such things as the PostScript interpreter itself, PostScript dictionaries, display list, font caching, and program memory.

Published Date: Feb 19, 2012