C7300/C7500/C9300/C9500 VE Product Information

Rev 1.1 ODA

Document Contents

Hardware

• What is VE? • How can a VE unit be identified from a current unit? • New Features • New Hardware • New Part Numbers • Compatibility Issues

Software

• Oki Color Correction Utility • Oki Print Job Accounting 2.0 • Mac Rendezvous Support

HARDWARE

What is VE?

VE refers to a manufacturing process where improvements and changes are made to an existing product. In the case of the C7300/C7500/C9300/C9500 it involves an upgrade to the current feature set as well as several hardware changes.

How can a VE unit be identified from a current unit?

The VE version of the C7000/C9000 series can be quickly Identified by looking at the S/N label either on the back of the unit or by printing a Menu Map.

A current unit S/N is shown below (take note that the alphanumeric character is an A) A VE unit S/N is shown below (take note that the alphanumeric character is a B)

N31063A 01 Made In Thailand

3 1 2 B 1 0 0 0 0 6 5

3 0 8 A 1 0 0 0 6 7 0N31063A 01 Made In Thailand

New Features

Custom paper size support from Tray 1 The VE units now support custom paper sizes from Tray 1. Current version units would only allow custom page sizes to be printed from the Multi Purpose tray. In order for this feature to work the new driver (PCL Version 2.01, PS PPD Version 2.0) or higher must be used in conjunction with the VE printer.

Multi Purpose Tray support duplexing

On current models when a duplex command is issued for paper that is being fed from the MP tray, the print job is automatically changed to a single sided print job. In the VE models any paper size that can be duplexed from Tray 1-5 can now be fed and duplexed from the MP tray. This does not include custom paper sizes.

USB Upgrade

VE printers will now support the USB 2.0 specification which allows for data transfer rates of up to 480Mb/s. Current models only support USB 1.1 which allows for 12Mb/s.

Quieter Operation in Power Save Mode The VE models will rotate fans slower in power save mode in order to cut down on noise levels. This should bring the levels down from 43dBA to approximately 38dBA.

New file system maintenance feature for the HDD option

Two new menu options have been added under the Administrator menu.

Check File System OFF Default FLASH Repairs the Flash device area HDD Repairs the HDD device area

HDD ON Normal state HDD is recognized and usable OFF In this mode the printer will start up and act as if no HDD is installed

New Hardware

OkiLAN 8100e SoftNIC

It is very important that you be able to distinguish between the different NIC cards as the new 8100e SoftNIC is not backwards compatible with the current version of printers.

What is a SoftNIC?

A SoftNIC or Host Based interface is a NIC card that does not have any logic of its own. All processing is done by the host, which in the case of the OkiLAN 8100e is the printer itself. The SoftNIC uses the CPU on the CU board in order to process data. The NIC F/W is built-in to the CU board.

Improvements that have been made to the NIC are as follows:

• MAC Rendezvous support Rendezvous is a network printer discovery tool developed by Apple in order to ease the setup and installation of network printers and systems.

• Increased throughput Performance is increased approximately 4 times with network speed increased from 325KB/s to 1.4Mb/s. LPR transfer speed is raised from 1.3Mb/s to 3.5Mb/s.

• Improved Email alerts Emails will be sent at set intervals rather than when the event occurs. One email can contain multiple alerts, and the user can set the interval at which emails will be sent. Reference the compatibility chart below to identify which NIC cards work in which rev printer:

OkiLAN 6200e+ (Troy NIC)

OkiLAN 7300e (JCI / Silex NIC)

OkiLAN 8100e (Silex)

Current Units “A Rev” X VE Units “B Rev”

Limited Functionality*

Limited Functionality*

*Limited Functionality – NIC does not support the improvements that have been made with the SoftNIC.

New (VE) Part Numbers

Printer CU Board CU ROM DIMM C7300 42503109 42277521 C7500 42503109 42277521 C9300 42503109 42277522 C9500 42503119 42277522

NIC physical differences:

OkiLAN 6200e/6200e+

OkiLAN 7300

OkiLAN 8100e SoftNIC

New Controller (CU) Board

Two new controller (CU) PCB’s HME & HMF will be introduced with the VE units.

Changes to the controller are:

• The CPU on the HMF has changed from a PPC750cxe to a PPC750FX

• Even though the PPC750FX can run at a speed of 750MHz it is scaled back to 600MHz

• The L2 cache on the CPU has been doubled in size from 256KB to 512KB

• The EEPROM was has been changed from a 93C86 to a 24C32 in order to fulfill the need for a capacity increase

• HMF is a replacement for the TIG-2 boards and is only for use with the C9500 series units

• HME is the replacement for the TIG-3 and is only for use in the C7300/C7500/C9300 series units

Old C73/C75/C93 TIG-3 Board New C73/C75/C93 HME “VE” Board

Note the NBC-2 marking on the new HME & HMF boards. NBC-2 = VE

Compatibility Issues Due to the change in the Controller (CU) PCB and several software changes, there are compatibility issues that need to be recognized.

C7300/C7500 Program ROM DIMM Compatibility

Old Program ROM DIMM

HME Board

Printer will not initialize, and the display shows black squares on the top line of the operator panel

New Program ROM DIMM

TIG-3 Board

Printer will not initialize, and the display shows black squares on the top line of the operator panel

C9300/C9500 Program ROM DIMM Compatibility

Old Program ROM DIMM

HMF Board

Fatal Error 43

New Program ROM DIMM

TIG-2 Board

Printer will not initialize, and the display shows black squares on the top line of the operator panel

EEPROM

Old EEPROM 93C86

HME Board

???

New EEPROM 24C32

TIG-3 Board

??

SOFTWARE

Oki Color Correction Utility

The Color Correction Utility allows the user to adjust the colors expressed in wither the CMYK or RGB color spaces which are used in almost all general purpose office or graphic applications to their liking. There are two different modes (shown in the picture below) that can be used “Office Palette Tuning” and “Hue and Saturation Tuning”.

Office Palette Tuning

Office Palette Tuning allows the user to adjust the way that the colors of the Microsoft Office color palette are printed in order to more closely match them with the colors displayed on screen. There are several screenshots below of the utility.

Hue & Saturation Tuning

Allows the user to adjust the shade of a specific output color for the entire image. In the Gamma Adjustment, you can adjust the overall lightness/darkness contrast of a color. In the Hue/Saturation Adjustment, you can adjust the output color of the entire image by adjusting hue/ saturation for each color of RGB and CMY.

Oki Print Job Accounting 2.0

Oki Print Job Accounting was introduced with the C7300/C7500/C9300/C9500 series. Revision 2.0 now introduces several new features such as User/Printer groups and Toner Usage tracking, along with support for the new VE models.

Printer/User Grouping

Job Accounting now allows for multiple printers/users to be grouped together in order for an admin to track usages by group as opposed to only tracking a single user.

Toner Usage Amount Recording

Toner usage amount is a new feature that enables tracking of toner percentages. There are 6 different percentage tracking levels that can be used to charge for toner usage. Category Average Toner Coverage Level 0 No toner used Level 1 between 1 and 5% Level 2 between 6 and 15% Level 3 between 16 and 30% Level 4 between 31 and 60% Level 5 between 61 and 100% The 6 levels represent a range of toner coverage per page across the entire print job. For example, a job reported as Level 2 implies that the average page coverage is between 5 and 15%. The level assigned to a print job is based on all the toner used across all pages of a print job. Therefore, a job reported as Level 2 may have some pages that are lower than 5% and some pages that are higher than 15% coverage.

Mac Rendezvous Support

The VE units now support the latest Macintosh networking system, Rendezvous. Rendezvous allows users to “instantly” discover and communicate with other Macs or devices without having to change complex configuration settings or have a broad knowledge of networking. For more detailed information on Rendezvous visit the link below: http://a256.g.akamai.net/7/256/51/40eab2299de09b/www.apple.com/macosx/pdfs/Rendezvous_TB.pdf