In the Color LaserWriter 12/600 PS, the Apple Contone Compression Technology is tuned to print a standard letter-size or A4 page using only 12 MB of RAM on the printer's I/O board. If you attempt to print a legal-size page on a Color LaserWriter 12/600 PS with 12 MB of RAM, some areas of light colors will appear white, and some portions of the document may disappear altogether. The name for this effect is "dropout".
Dropout occurs because the Apple Contone Compression Technology uses a higher compression technique which uses only the C,M, and Y color planes to fit a legal-sized image into the same amount of RAM as a letter-sized image.
To eliminate dropout, add more RAM to the printer's I/O board. Adding 4 MB of RAM (for a total of 16 MB) will allow legal-size pages to print without dropout.
This article was published in the Information Alley on 09 July 1996.