ewiles@netxdev.DHL.COM (Edwin Wiles) (09/01/89)
Thank you for your attention! I've an A500, to which I have had a printer connected for quite some time. A while ago the ink cartridge in the printer ran out, and I've only just gotten a new one put in. When I went to use it, I got some rather weird garbage out of it. I finally realized that the low order bit of the data was *always* set. Thus, characters who's ASCII bit value requires a zero in the low order bit, appear instead as the next higher valued character. i.e This sentence would appear like this when printed. i/e!Uiis!seoueoce!woume!aqqeas!mike!uiis!wieo!qsiouee/ Now I've read in the past in the amiga groups that the serial port chips can fail in various nasty ways, but this is a PARALLEL port printer. My questions are as follows: 1) Can the parallel port hardware fail in the manner described above (i.e. the low order bit is 'frozen' on)? 2) Is there any way (aside from lugging hardware around to other sites for testing) to be *certain* that it's the parallel hardware? 3) Presuming that it's the parallel driver chips (or whatever); how hard is this to fix? 4) In combination with #3, what chips, etc, would need replacing, and where do they hide on an A500? (I'm not an electrician or a hardware specialist, but I have had digital hardware courses, so I've a basic understanding of chips and how to handle them. I'm also not a bad hand with a soldering iron if that's needed.) Please note that I would prefer you to mail your responses to me, as the amiga groups seem to get an awful lot of traffic and you might get lost in it! I will be happy to summarize the responses and post that summary. Also note that I've directed followups to comp.sys.amiga. Many Thanks! "Who?... Me?... WHAT opinions?!?" | Edwin Wiles Schedule: (n.) An ever changing nightmare. | NetExpress Comm., Inc. ..!uunet!netxcom!ewiles (I'm certain!) | 1953 Gallows Rd. Suite 300 OR ewiles@iad-nxe.global-mis.DHL.COM (I think!) | Vienna, VA 22182