Epson FX-185 User Manual - Page 33

Additional Supplies and Accessories The following items may be purchased separately from your Epson dealer: Printer cable or interface kit. Each computer system has its own way of connecting to a printer. Some computers need a cable only, others require both a cable and board. The FX printers use the Centronics standard parallel interface scheme described in Appendix K. If your computer expects to communicate through a serial rather than through a parallel interface, you must purchase a serial board for your FX. Your Epson dealer stocks a variety of FX interface boards as well as cables. Printer paper. FX printers are designed to accommodate several types and sizes of paper. Both printers include tractors so that you can use continuous-feed paper with pin-feed holes and friction mechanisms so that you can use paper without these holes. Ribbon cartridge replacement. The expected life of a cartridge is three million characters (roughly 1,000 pages of text). Print head replacement. The expected life of a print head is one hundred million characters (over 30,000 pages of text). Roll paper holder. For the FX-80, you may purchase an optional rollpaper holder. Printer Location Naturally, your printer must sit somewhere near the computer (the length of the cable is the limiting factor), but there are other considerations in finding a choice location for your computer/printer setup. For instance, you may want to find an electrical outlet that is not controlled by a switch-since a switch may be accidentally shut off while you have valuable information stored in memory Be sure the outlet is grounded (do not use an adapter plug). To minimize power fluctuations, avoid using an outlet on the same circuit breaker with large electrical machines or appliances. Finally, for continuous-feed operations you must allow enough room for the paper to flow freely, as in Figure 1-3. 16