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EPSON Imaging Technology Center Page: 7
Revision: 1 10/6/00
This Programming Guide is intended for use in conjunction with the EPSON Standard
ESC/P Reference Manual (December 1997)
CHAPTER 1 : INTRODUCTION
This section of the Programming Guide will provide a technical overview of EPSON’s Stylus
Photo 870 inkjet printer to facilitate driver development.
1.1 EPSON Stylus Photo 870
The Stylus Photo 870 is a six-color inkjet printer from EPSON. The Stylus Photo 870 is
targeted for home photography uses. Printouts are intended to last as long as traditional color
photo lab prints, using 1440 x 720 dpi. This printer allows continuous edge-to-edge snapshots
with the EPSON Digital PhotoLab
Starter Kit. The starter kit includes a roll paper holder,
EPSON Premium Glossy Photo Roll Paper and helpful photo software like EPSON Software
Film Factory
and Adobe
PhotoDeluxe
. The user will be capable of printing snapshots,
personal photo greeting cards and bigger-than-life panoramics.
Excluding the Japanese market, this printer is sold world wide as the Stylus Photo 870.
The Stylus Photo 870 uses the Micro Piezo print head and two-cartridges. It uses one black ink
cartridge and one multicolor cartridge that contains five inks. The five inks in the single
multicolor cartridge are Yellow, Cyan, Light-Cyan, Magenta and Light-Magenta. All of the color
inks have the same ink formulation.
The EPSON Stylus Photo 870 printer incorporates the following features:
Six individual ink colors
Built in Automatic Sheet Feeder (ASF)
Built-in 8-bit bidirectional parallel interface (IEEE-1284)
Print densities up to 1440(H) x 720(V)
Wide range of paper types
With the Stylus Photo 870’s bi-directional interfaces and EPSON’s Remote Mode bi-directional
printer control language, the host computer can obtain key printer status information.
This document doesn’t contain information for an individual ISV’s specific driver development,
but does contain the new ESC/P 2 commands associated with the Stylus Photo 870’s ability to
reproduce subtle tone variations. For example, commands such as: Select dot Size “ESC ( e”,
Select Ink Color “ESC ( r”, and a few recently enhanced ESC/P 2 commands are included in this
section of the Programming Guide.