OKI C5100n

OKI are very proud of their LED printheads which are used on almost all their electrophotographic printers.

OKI are pretty unusual in using this technology. It removes a mechanical stage from the laser-print process and does seem to be more reliable - it is one of Oki's unique selling points.

Electrophotography is the science of using light to control fields of static electricity and the distribution of toner particles. There is a long and complex history with the key features being Chester Carlson's sequence of patents and the launch of the "Xerox 914" copier in 1959. The copier - and perhaps the fax - are amongst the things making modern office paper-work possible.

Xerox have been an inventive company. They modified the "914", adding a CRT to make the "LDX" fax machine in 1964 - the first modern fax. Later they modified a faster copier to become the first laser printer in 1970. Perhaps most importantly Xerox "Alto" computers developed the idea that a computer could display a document as an interactive graphic on a screen. Xerox failed to commercialise this idea but its picked up by Steve Jobs of Apple (Xerox got stock options) and then by Bill Gates at Microsoft.

Xerox lost momentum in the 1970s, a court judgement forced them to share their copier patents and they sold the bulk of the computer assets they had been building. Japanese companies like Canon, Ricoh and Minolta took the leadership in copiers and then laser printers.

A huge new market for laser printers developed as the new graphical Windows and Mac office computers replaced typewriters. The bulk of that market passed to HP, basing their machines on Canon engines.

OKI

OKI are quite an old company, their heritage dates back to 1881 when Kibataro Oki developed an Edison type telephone using carbon powder. Lacquer-coated wire is another invention credited to Oki.

During the 1960s OKI developed computers and banking machinery - they remain a major maker of ATMs today. Unlike Canon and Konica-Minolta they didn't have a background in cameras and copiers so they missed out on the first wave of laser printer development.

OKI were in the forefront as developers of a more convenient fax machine using thermal technology and seem to have preferred that as a potential computer printing technology. where Oki succeeded well with its thermal fax, Okimate colour printers were liked but proved too slow and expensive for office use. HP had a line of thermal printers at one time. Apple had the Silentype (Silentwriter), and IBM the Quietwriter - so OKI weren't out on a limb, it just wasn't technology that would come good.

OKI have a claim to have invented the dot matrix printer with the OKI Wiredot in 1968. Certainly OKI's Microline 80 printers were built like tanks. Dot matrix technology was very popular into the 1990s but it's lack of the resolution to produce a good graphic and inconvenient ribbon lift mechanism for colour meant the market would be limited.

OKI seem to have taken a dislike to inkjet technology (many engineers would agree) and they didn't want to imitate other companies laser mechanisms - so they developed their own LED printheads.

OKI printers are therefore electrophotographic - but not laser printers.

There is a bit more on the C5600 page.

Although computing has an aura on newness about it you can't get away from standards, which are often rooted in a deep and dark history. That is true of print languages. The basic problem with the C5100 is that it was meant to go with Windows XP and it's predecessors - and it isn't being updated for Windows 7, 9 and 10.

What the phrase Windows host based printing system means is that the computer and specifically the print driver makes up the page image for the printer using the computer's internal programming API (with MS-Windows this is called the GDI). The page is then transferred from computer to printer memory as a compressed bitmap using a rudimentary OKI proprietary language called Hiper-C.   This is actually an economical way to do things since the printer doesn't need a powerful page-formatting processor of it's own - although being a colour electrophotographic machine (mustn't say laser printer) it does still need a processor and quite a lot of memory.

You can see this with the C5100; it makes do with a 200MHz processor and 32MB memory. It's sister C5300 with its fancy PCL and Postscriptprint languages needs a 400MHz processor and 64MB or even 128MB for the duplex model. That wasn't far short of what users typically had on their PCs at the time. So the C5100 saved a bit of money.

The problem has come as Microsoft moved on from XP. The bulk of the old operating system had originally been written before the Internet and the Web became common place and XP's network stack and applications like IE were riddled with security loopholes. One problem is that printer users often think a new print driver will solve error messages - and in fact they download malware. Hence that need for better security.

So Microsoft has introduced 64 bit digitally signed drivers - but the poor old C5100 is now a bit of an orphan. OKI don't want to rewrite the driver - that would be an odd exercise for a printer they built years ago. Microsoft don't want to rewrite the driver - it isn't theirs and the Hiper-C bitmap transfer language it uses was Oki-proprietary anyway.

The C5100 should work under Linux using foo2hiperc - providing someone out there maintains it (or doesn't break it). The C5300 with PostScript and PCL will still work even if no-one does provide specific drivers; it should work as Generic PostScript or perhaps as Color LaserJet.

There is just a chance that the C5100 might work with the C5650 driver for Windows 7. Oki don't say so- they wouldn't. They might prefer you to buy a new OKI printer.