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Printing to a Modern Device from a 5150

G

Great Hierophant

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My 5150 has an IBM Printer Adapter or an IBM Monochrome Display and Printer Adapter. I tried connecting it to a modern multi-function device (Brother MFC-8460N) using a standard parallel cable. I hit Ctrl + Prn Sc in IBM PC-DOS 2.0 and the Status light of the printing device kept blinking but nothing ever printed. I know that it is possible to use an old printer like the IBM ProPrinter with Windows XP, but is the reverse possible?
 
Have you tried to press CRTL-FF on the printer :D

Most Brother printers luckily support more than Windows GDI alone.

I looked it up, that device understands:

PCL6,
BR-Script 3 (PostScript® 3-lang. emulation),
IBM Pro-Printer XL, Epson FX-850

I think the question is how to put it in IBM Pro-Printer XL mode- must be in the manual somewhere..
 
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Page printers print the whole page at once (duh), so they need to know when the page is finished. If there isn't a formfeed in the file, there's usually a button on the printer to print and eject the page, and for the future it's convenient to have a bat or com file on the path that sends a formfeed (CTL-L). There could of course be other incompatibilities; try printing something longer than one page.
 
I think you all are missing the bigger issue. Many new printers have their own printer control language, and won't know what to do with straight ASCII text (or otherwise) sent to it.

A modern multi-function printer might have the expectation that it is always under driver support, and if you don't have DOS drivers, you are out of luck.
 
Well, if it's got a parallel port and does PCL-6, Pro-PrinterXL and Epson FX-850, there's a pretty good chance that it understands ASCII on the printer port.

Are you suggesting that it needs a Windows driver to print like an FX-850? Not much of an emulation then, I'd say...

m
 
MikeS,

You're right .. If it says it emulates those things, then it probably should handle ASCII.

The next quesiton would be, how do you tell the printer which mode it should be in?

Mike
 
Well, all those modes should print ASCII by default. But apparently the third post above has a link to the manual.
 
The manual tells me how to set the emulation. Here are the options:

Auto (EPSON)*
Auto (IBM)
HP LaserJet
BR-Script 3
Epson FX-850
IBM Proprinter

These seem to be rather old devices. Do you think I need a higher DOS version than 2.0?
 
Brother printers handle plain ASCII fine. As others have said you need to send it a form feed before it will print the page.

Code: 
copy con lpt1:
Hello World
^L
^Z
 
Sheesh; why does everything get so complicated...

Just push the button if there is one, or try this 19 byte .com to print and eject the page.

m
 
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I have actually got it to print from the Brother. It is very slow and I have to hit the Job Cancel button to actually get the machine to print the page. I have not yet mastered the way to do it.
 
Great Hierophant said:
I have actually got it to print from the Brother. It is very slow and I have to hit the Job Cancel button to actually get the machine to print the page. I have not yet mastered the way to do it.
Click to expand...
-------
Sigh...

The first time takes a while to get going; have you actually tried to "really" print something, i.e 4 or 5 pages? It should be a lot faster than any dot matrix printer once it gets going.
 
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