Bob@shark.UUCP (09/29/85)
Has anybody out there had any experience with the Smith-Corona "Messenger Module" (hereafter, MM) unit that's supposed to provide an RS-232 interface to (in this case) their Ultrasonic 350 electric typewriter. I got one of these beasts hoping to use the combination as a (low duty cycle) hard copy printer and it has yet to work. I've tried this with two different MM units, and both showed the same behavior. I've used a line monitor and found that the MM always seems to pull down DTR (pin 20) when I issue the CODE-p command (regardless of the DTR polarity setting), so nothing is sent. If I bypass DTR by leaving it open, I can get garbage to the typewriter. The problem then begins to resemble a baud rate mismatch, but I've diddled with the baud rate, parity, stop bit, and most of the other settings on both ends (my terminal is an Ann Arbor Ambassador) to no avail. Has anybody out there used the MM, successfully or not? What was your configuration. Please reply by netmail. Thanks. - Bob Lewis ...!tektronix!shark!bobl