d@alice.UucP (Daniel Rosenberg) (09/02/86)
I'm beginning to lose faith here.
I bought an "Amiga printer cable" from Harmony Computers & Electronics in
Brooklyn, NY. It came as an "AMEGA CENTR." cable. All the pins were
connected. It did not work with my LQ-800, which itself doesn't work
well either (extra linefeeds regardless of SW2-8 position!!)
So anyway -- I built my own cable - an IBM cable, gender-mendered,
pins 16 and 23-25 cut. This might not be correct.
My query: how do *you* build your parallel cables?
ANY REPLIES WOULD BE, LIKE, *REALLY* APPRECIATED!
Thankee.
--
# Daniel Rosenberg (CE) @ AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill
# disclaimer: These opinions are necessarily mine, not my employer's.
# UUCP: { (ihnp4) || research || allegra}!alice!d AT&T: 201/582-6455 (work)
# "We're not in the eighth dimension! We're over New Jersey!" - BBwtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew) (09/03/86)
Hi, I'm at home right now, so I dont have access to my heavy IBM pee-cee dox, but I grabbed the cable I made for my Amiga. It has on the end that would normally plug into the pee-cee pins 1-12 and 19 connected. Of those pins, it is wired just like the pee-cee cable, and with a sex changer on the db25 end, it will work with a pee-cee. It seems that I remember that when I used a "full" centronics cable that the Amiga kept resetting the printer. Also, watch out (you obviously have from the way your note reads) for the power output prints that are in unusual places on the Amiga's printer interface. Note, we are not responsible for any smoke that you make by wiring your amiga incorrectly! Bill Mayhew N. E. Ohio Universities College of Med. Rootstown, OH 44272 USA (216) 325-2511 ext 323 (wtm@neoucom.UUCP)
hull@hao.UUCP (Howard Hull) (09/03/86)
After some initial net correspondence about drivers, I set out to find
a good color printer driver. While in Lynnwood, WA. I happened to find
an Amiga dealer in a small shopping center just north of the Alderwood
Mall. He had some output from a Canon PJ-1080A 7-color ink jet printer
pasted to the wall. The complementary ink colors (it only really has
just yellow, cyan, magenta and black inks) and the primary subtractive
colors red, green, blue were bright and crisp, although in-between tones
were dark, sorta like paintings by the Dutch Masters. Nonetheless,
whoever wrote the driver did a really splendid job of using shading
patterns in the various ink colors to create in-between tones. I was
much impressed with it, and as this dealer was willing to let me copy
his "CANON WORKBENCH" disk, I decided to do that. The Canon PJ-1080A,
7-Color Ink Jet Printer, like the Epson JX80 4-Color dot matrix impact
printer, has evidently been discontinued, with no planned replacement.
Having the driver in hand, I got a printer from a local Boulder, CO Atari
dealer. It came without a cable, so I had to conjure one up. I began by
assuming that there was some sort of standard associated with parallel
printer cables, and put the Amiga pin listing (Page 7-13 of "Introduction
to Amiga") down on the table beside the Canon PJ-1080A listing (Section 7,
page 31) and started looking for signals with similar names. What I came
up with, and which also worked on the first try, is listed below:
CABLE
Cable: 25 wire Datalene, overall mylar-foil shielded and gray plastic jacket,
with shield drain wire. Any available full RS-232 standard cable will do.
CONNECTORS
Amiga end, DB25 female Canon PJ-1080A Amphenol 57-30360
25-pin from Radio Shack 36-pin, also from Radio Shack
FIRST ROW
Pin Signal Name Pin Signal Name
1. DRDY* Data Ready 1. DSTB (Low) [for loading]
2. D0 Data Bit 0 2. Data 1 (LSB)
3. D1 Data Bit 1 3. Data 2
4. D2 Data Bit 2 4. Data 3
5. D3 Data Bit 3 5. Data 4
6. D4 Data Bit 4 6. Data 5
7. D5 Data Bit 5 7. Data 6
8. D6 Data Bit 6 8. Data 7
9. D7 Data Bit 7 9. Data 8 (MSB)
10. ACK* ACKNOWLEDGE 10. ACKNLG (Low) [DSTB response]
11. BUSY BUSY 11. BUSY
12. POUT PAPER OUT 12. PE [Paper-supply End]
13. SEL SELECT 13. SLCT [Device Select]
14. NC [No Connection]
15. NC [No Connection]
16. GND (0V) Ground
Tie shield drain wire at one end only-->17. CHS/GND Chassis Ground
18. NC [No Connection]
SECOND ROW
14. GND SIGNAL GROUND 19. DSTB (Low) RET [Signal Return]
15. GND SIGNAL GROUND 20. DATA 1 RET [Signal Return]
16. GND SIGNAL GROUND 21. DATA 2 RET [Signal Return]
17. GND SIGNAL GROUND 22. DATA 3 RET [Signal Return]
18. GND SIGNAL GROUND 23. DATA 4 RET [Signal Return]
19. GND SIGNAL GROUND 24. DATA 5 RET [Signal Return]
20. GND SIGNAL GROUND 25. DATA 6 RET [Signal Return]
21. GND SIGNAL GROUND 26. DATA 7 RET [Signal Return]
22. GND SIGNAL GROUND 27. DATA 8 RET [Signal Return]
23. X +5V +5 VOLTS POWER !!NC!! 28. ACKNLG (Low)RET [Signal Return]
24. X !!NC!! 29. BUSY RET
25. RESET* RESET--------\ !!NC!! 30. GND (0V) Ground
* == (Low) == Low True \-------> 31. INIT (LOW) Initialize
!!NC!! 32. ERROR (LOW) Error Alarm Set
!!NC!! 33. GND (0V)
!!NC!! 34. NC [No Connection]
!!NC!! 35. +5V
!!NC!! 36. NC [No Connection]
As you can see, the connections are almost all straight-across correspondences.
The problems for the uninitiated, are, of course, 25 pins on one connector and
36 on the other, the lack of exact equivalence of Signal Names, and staggering
of bit numbers. The first two problems are caused by a lack of rigid standards
and the third is caused by the fact that hardware engineers never learned to
count right (as "Whot yew tellin' me, start with ZERO? ZERO ain't no NUMBER!"
[followed by a long, introspective silence...]). Also, the pin numbers on DB25
connectors are VERY hard to see. Make sure you locate the "1" by the first pin
on the long row, mark it with a broad felt tip marker so you don't lose track
of it. The short row starts with pin 14 directly under pin 1 on the Amiga, and
pin 19 directly under pin 1 on the Canon PJ-1080.
[Caveat: Without test, your cable may not pass FCC. It may help to tie the
two uncommitted wires in the cable to pins 30 and 33 at the printer end, and
stub them off at the Amiga End. If you go to that much trouble, get metallized
connector shells and make sure they contact the mylar shield foil.]
Howard Hull
[If yet unproven concepts are outlawed in the range of discussion...
...Then only the deranged will discuss yet unproven concepts]
{ucbvax!hplabs | decvax!noao | mcvax!seismo | ihnp4!seismo} !hao!hullkeithe@tekgvs.UUCP (Keith Ericson) (09/03/86)
Hey, folks with printers doing double-linefeeds: listen up! For
some reason only an Epsonite could explain there is a silly little
wire in the otherwise normal "Centronics-standard" cable that, when
grounded, over-rides the internal switch setting for "LF added to
CR" mode.
I first discovered this by doing the EE equivalent of "reading the
code": I got out the manual and traced the stupid schematic. There
it was, in black and white. The other half of the problem is that
the other end of the wire - at your computer - is usually grounded
("Hey, Martha! What should we do with this unused wire we got left
over here?" "Well, he hasn't been behaving very well today: let's
ground him!") and that fixes that!
keithfgd3@jc3b21.UUCP (Fabbian G. Dufoe) (09/08/86)
In article <6014@alice.uUCp>, d@alice.UUCP writes: > My query: how do *you* build your parallel cables? > -- > # Daniel Rosenberg (CE) @ AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill I had the problem of connecting my Amiga to a Radio Shack Daisy Wheel II printer. I started with a standard Amiga Centronics parallel printer cable. The Radio Shack printer--like most of theirs--does not send ACK* on pin 10. The Amiga sets up the data on pins 2 through 9, then pulls pin 1 low for a moment to signal the printer that it is ok to read the data. The Amiga waits until pin 10 is pulled low momentarily before sending the next character. So it would print one character and wait... and wait... and wait. I sought help from my dealer and through them from Commodore. Nobody could figure out how to get the high-to-low transition back to the Amiga. I kept tinkering and finally tried connecting pin 11 (BUSY) to pin 10. When the printer finished printing it pulled BUSY low. By feeding that same signal to the Amiga on pin 10 I gave it the transition it was looking for. The distressing thing about this story is that I know next to nothing about hardware and I found an answer when the engineers at Commodore (according to the dealer) couldn't. I can only believe the problem wasn't communicated to them clearly--the solution is too simple to have been beyond their abilities. Fabbian Dufoe 350 Ling-A-Mor Terrace South St. Petersburg, Florida 33705 813-823-2350 UUCP: ...akgua!akguc!codas!peora!ucf-cs!usfvax2!jc3b21!fgd3