Computer components cheat sheet

nick@campfyre.nickwebster.dev to Programmer Humor@programming.dev – 740 points –
50

"No" is the most accurate I could ever have imagined for Inkjet Printers

Not to be confused with β€œNo.”

What about "angry robot demands ink sacrifice"?

Laser printers more accurately "bake paper so that number powder sticks to it"

There are two common types of laser printers. Those that have special paper that react to heat, such as receipt printers, would fit the description.

The other laser printers.. Hm, I don't think your description is accurate either. It's more that the laser electrically charges ink particles so that they jump on to a separate roller that gets rolled on to the paper.

I'm no expert though.

I am not aware of any receipt printers using lasers - thermal printers have an array of resistors that get hot when necessary. I know how a laser printer works and it is hard to explain in 12 or so words. Inkjets are way easier, you can just say "squirt squirt oops". Anyway...

  1. A photosensitive drum gets a negative electrostatic charge.
  2. A laser shining through a rotating prism scans lines across the drum's surface. This removes charge from parts of the drum that should not be covered in toner.
  3. A high-voltage corona wire inside the toner reservoir charges an amount of toner positively.
  4. The charged drum rotates past the corona wire, getting covered in toner where its negative charge remains.
  5. Paper is pushed against the drum and the powdery toner is transferred to it.
  6. The paper continues into a fuser, a little oven where a heating element briefly makes the toner so hot that it melts, its powder particles making a permanent bond among themselves and with the paper. (The heater is usually stationary and heats the paper from below. The fuser drum that pushes paper against the heater can get sticky and pick up some of the toner, making images repeat down the page. This is the most common failure mode that cannot be resolved through regular maintenance such as replacing the toner cartridge and printing cleaning pages. However, almost all laser printers have a cheap fuser module or its drum available so it is usually worth replacing.)

I like the chemical paper because I can write on it with a hot stick.

It's an accurate description of laser printers. The "powder" in the description are small plastic flakes (toner), and the paper is baked so that powder melts into it.

Receipt printers have no additional consumables beyond the paper. The heat itself is all the paper needs.

Wait, seriously? We use plastic for printing documents as well?

Yup, that's what toner is. Little black plastic flecks. If you break a toner cartridge and get it everywhere, try not to breathe too hard.

I thought this was a D&D alignment chart at first... And yes, Inkjet printers are chaotic evil.

I think they're lawful evil, more devils than demons.

yes because unfortunately selling printer ink at higher prices than human blood is somehow completely legal

Inkjet: uses yellow ink to dye paper.

But what if it's just black text?

Inkjet: USES YELLOW INK TO DYE PAPER

HDD - Remembers numbers loudly is on point for 90s/2000s disk drives. πŸ˜‚

... server/enterprise level HDDs are loud af, I swear some brands are dedicated to it.

That leaves us only with the tiny WD Red Plus (but not Red Pro), above 20TB afaik only Exos (from X21 onwards) doesn't alert the neighbours.

But in (second half-ish?) of 90s HDDs differed a lot in terms of loudness. I was one of those nerds with custom (fully home made) water loop just to achieve some level of quietness.

Hey my inkjet with refillable tanks isn't so bad

Which one is it? The one I have still has an overflow/nozzle cleaning sponge that bricks the printer when it's full

Oh yeah that whole thing is fucking stupid but bypassable depending on model

Yeah will see what I can do once it starts complaining

So you need to hack it and violate warranty to make it work? And this is just fine? On a product you paid for?

Now do software concepts like Bitcoin, machine learning, and blockchain.

Bitcoin: An excel spreadsheet a bunch of people agree on.
Machine Learning: Electrons in a room banging on typewriters.
Blockchain: A marketing term for linked lists.

I think you switched blockchain and bitcoin

I love my inkjet. It's so nice to be able to do my own high quality prints for the wall and for friends.

Laserprinters use different colored lasers for multi-color printing.

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