LaserWriter Plus

The LaserWriter Plus was a monochrome laser printer that was released by Apple Computer in March 1986. The second model of the LaserWriter series, it was announced on January 16, 1986 at the 1986 Apple World Conference in San Francisco.

Description
The LaserWriter Plus could print at a resolution of 300-dpi from a Canon LBP-CX print engine that could output 8 pages-per-minute with a rated life of 300,000 pages. It is compatible with Apple M0180 or HP LaserJet 92285A toner cartridges (also used by the series).

The 12 MHz Motorola 68000 processor (running at 11.16 MHz) could rasterize images from PostScript Level 1 or printer data. However, rasterization performance was hampered by a incurred by the use of slower memory. The data could be transmitted through a LocalTalk network to its serial port, or a direct serial PC connection to its  port.

Included fonts
The LaserWriter Plus featured a 1 MB ROM with twice the capacity of the original LaserWriter, allowing the number of built-in fonts to be expanded from 13 to 35:
 * ITC Avant Garde
 * ITC Bookman
 * Courier
 * Helvetica
 * Helvetica Narrow
 * New Century Schoolbook
 * Palatino
 * Symbol
 * Times
 * ITC Zapf Chancery
 * ITC Zapf Dingbats

Discontinuation
The LaserWriter and LaserWriter Plus were both discontinued in February 1988 and superseded by the LaserWriter II series.

Articles

 * Apple Plans Release of New Laserwriter by Jim Forbes and Karen Sorenson at InfoWorld (1985-12-23)