nessus@nsc.UUCP (Kchula-Rrit) (04/27/85)
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I have a problem with a Integral Data Systems IDS-440 "Paper Tiger"
printer. My old printer driver(BASIC PEEKs and POKEs) worked fine with this
printer. I sent the data to the parallel port and toggled the strobe, then
waited 100ms for each character. This worked fine but was/is S-L-O-W.
Then I decided to use the BUSY signal provided by the printer and avoid the
time delay. I checked BUSY and if it was high, then I would wait until it went
low. The printer prints on recieving a line feed or carriage return, otherwise
it collects the data in a buffer. My printer has a 2K buffer in it. I tried
printing a file with the new driver, with good results and, of course much
faster. In my "BUSY wait" loop, there is a "waiting..." message to indicate
that BUSY is active. I never saw the message in normal operation, so far
so good...
The next thing I did was to send a LARGE(4000) number of characters to the
printer without sending a line feed or carriage return to see if BUSY really
worked, or if my BASIC was too slow to catch it. Well, nothing happened for
about 30 seconds, then the computer printed the "BUSY wait" message. Fine,
except that BUSY never went away!! I aborted the program and tried to send data
to the printer by hand by PEEKing and POKing. After sending a few carriage
returns and line feeds and still getting no response from the printer and
nothing printed, I had to cycle the power on the printer to get it out the
"endless loop"
Does anyone out there know of a fix for this bug/mis-feature? For now,
I hope I don't fill the buffer again...
Kchula-Rrit
!menlo70!nsc!nessuscdl@mplvax.UUCP (Carl Lowenstein) (04/29/85)
In article <2641@nsc.UUCP> nessus@nsc.UUCP (Kchula-Rrit) writes: > I have a problem with a Integral Data Systems IDS-440 "Paper Tiger" > >it collects the data in a buffer. My printer has a 2K buffer in it. > > The next thing I did was to send a LARGE(4000) number of characters to the >printer without sending a line feed or carriage return to see if BUSY really >worked My recollection of this printer is that it never does any *printing* until you send it a <lf> or <cr>. Therefore it has no way of emptying the buffer, and the buffer stays full while further characters are ignored. There is probably a 'flush the buffer' magic character, but my Paper Tiger manual is several miles away. Look in yours. -- carl lowenstein marine physical lab u.c. san diego {ihnp4|decvax|akgua|dcdwest|ucbvax} !sdcsvax!mplvax!cdl