Apple LaserWriter II

What the Apple LaserWriter II was

The Apple LaserWriter II was a family of 300-dpi monochrome desktop laser printers introduced by Apple Computer, Inc. in 1988. Three models launched under the name — the entry-level LaserWriter IISC, the mid-range LaserWriter IINT, and the high-end LaserWriter IINTX — and Apple later extended the line with the LaserWriter IIf and IIg in October 1991. All shared one physical chassis and the same Canon LBP-SX marking engine, printing at 300 dots per inch and up to eight pages per minute, with a minimum engine life expectancy of 300,000 pages, as documented in Apple's LaserWriter II NT/NTX Owner's Guide and Apple's per-model technical-specification pages.

A family built on interchangeable controllers

The defining idea of the LaserWriter II was modularity. As Wikipedia records, the LaserWriter II was designed to allow complete replacement of the circuit board that operates the printer, while across all the different models the print engine stayed the same. Swapping the controller board changed what the printer could do without changing the engine underneath. The LaserWriter IISC was a low-end, host-based QuickDraw printer that connected over SCSI, did not use PostScript, and — per Wikipedia — did not require an Adobe license; it carried two SCSI ports for daisy-chaining and no AppleTalk support. The LaserWriter IINT added Adobe PostScript and AppleTalk networking, and the LaserWriter IINTX paired PostScript and AppleTalk with a SCSI controller for a dedicated printer-font hard disk.

The Canon LBP-SX engine and how a page was printed

Appendix E of Apple's LaserWriter II NT/NTX Owner's Guide identifies the marking engine as a Canon LBP-SX laser-xerographic mechanism. Like other laser printers of its generation, it formed each page electrophotographically: a laser writes a latent image on a photoconductor drum, the image is developed with toner, and heat fuses the toner to the paper — the guide notes the fuser reaches high temperature to fuse the dots onto the page. The guide records a print quality of 300 dots per inch for text and graphics (about 7.4 million dots per page) and a maximum speed of eight pages per minute. Consumables and wear parts followed the cartridge model of that engine generation; the guide lists a minimum life expectancy of 300,000 pages and a recommended service interval of 100,000 pages.

PostScript, QuickDraw, and the raster image processor

How a page was described differed sharply across the family. The LaserWriter IISC used QuickDraw and relied on the host Macintosh to rasterize the page before sending it over SCSI; Apple's specifications list a 68000 processor at 7.45 MHz and just 16 KB of ROM in that model. The PostScript models carried far more computing power to act as their own raster image processors: per Apple's specifications and the owner's guide, the IINT used a 68000 at 11.5 MHz and the IINTX a 68020 at 16.67 MHz, each with 1 MB of ROM. The guide lists 35 resident fonts in ROM spanning eleven typeface families — ITC Avant Garde, ITC Bookman, Courier, Helvetica, Helvetica Narrow, New Century Schoolbook, Palatino, Symbol, Times, ITC Zapf Chancery, and ITC Zapf Dingbats — and notes support for additional PostScript fonts. The IINT could also interpret Diablo 630 data, while the IINTX added HP LaserJet emulation; the IINTX's RAM was expandable to 12 MB and it could attach a dedicated SCSI hard disk for fonts.

Networking and connectivity

Connectivity tracked each model's controller. Apple's specifications list the IISC with a SCSI interface only, while the IINT and IINTX offered LocalTalk (running the AppleTalk protocols), RS-232/RS-422 serial, and Apple Desktop Bus connections per the owner's guide; the IINTX added a SCSI interface for its font hard disk and a slot for ROM expansion. Because AppleTalk let several Macintosh computers share one printer, a networked LaserWriter II could serve a workgroup. The later LaserWriter IIg went further: Apple's specifications list an Ethernet port alongside LocalTalk and serial, and Wikipedia describes the IIg as the first LaserWriter with a built-in Ethernet network interface.

The IIf and IIg (1991): PostScript Level 2

In October 1991 Apple extended the line with the LaserWriter IIf and IIg. Apple's specifications list both with a Motorola 68030 processor — 20 MHz in the IIf and 25 MHz in the IIg — 2 MB of ROM, and support for Adobe PostScript Level 2 and PCL 4+ (HP LaserJet) emulation. The IIf carried 2 MB of RAM expandable to 32 MB; the IIg started at 5 MB, also expandable to 32 MB. Both continued to use the same 300-dpi, eight-page-per-minute engine and 45-pound chassis as the original 1988 models.

Place in printing history

The LaserWriter II carried forward the desktop-publishing role established by the original 1985 Apple LaserWriter, but with a modular design that let buyers choose their price and capability point — from a host-based QuickDraw printer to a networked PostScript workhorse — on a common engine and chassis. Apple's specifications record staggered discontinuations: the IISC in July 1990, the IINT and IINTX in October 1991 as the IIf and IIg arrived, the IIf in May 1993, and the IIg in October 1993.

Documented specifications and reference scope

This page records only specifications traceable to authoritative sources: Apple's own technical-specification support pages for each model and Apple's LaserWriter II NT/NTX Owner's Guide, supplemented by Wikipedia for the family's design history. Where the record is model-specific — processor, memory, page description language, and interfaces all differ between the SC, NT, NTX, IIf, and IIg — the differences are noted rather than averaged. Any figure that could not be traced to a reliable source is omitted rather than estimated. This is a historical reference, not a buying guide, and it quotes no current pricing or availability.