Daisy Wheel Printer II

[PhilipA]

Question

I have a Daisy Wheel Printer II that is hooked up and working with my Model III, but out of curiosity, I see it has a Centronics connector on the back.. can you run it directly off a standard IBM-PC parallel > Centronics wire?

I don't want to plug anything to anything else, save the inevitable POP and it all cease function.

I can't find anything that suggests the two operate with similar connections, signals or protocols.


Thanks

--Phil

 

[Frank S]

Hello Phil,
yes, the DWPII works with the PC.
Please check the cable you use.
There are +5V on pin 18 of the printer.
Under Windows you can use the Universal(Generic) text printer which is provided from Windows.
The character set from the printer is very different for some characters, so i build an code translator with an ATMEGA 8515 to have also bold and underline attributes.
But the windows driver have errors. The underline function doesn't work.

Frank

 

[PhilipA]

okay, thank you. I'll give it a try.

--Phil

 

[gonk23]

This document, contained within a link recently provided by OS9dude in another thread, may also be useful:

http://support.radioshack.com/support_accessories/doc50/50777.htm

 

[Dwight Elvey]

Some BIOS chips have the handshake incorrect ( I forget which but
I think it was an AMI BIOS on a 80286 ). It worked OK with characters
but failed when doing bitmapped stuff.
Just a note that problem are not always Windows driver fails.
Dwight

 

[Frank S]

...It worked OK with characters
but failed when doing bitmapped stuff...

Hello Dwight,
the Windows generic text driver handles only character based transfers.
The DWPII handshake the transfer only with BUSY, there is no ACK signal.
May be, that some PC BIOS/Hardware combinations doesn't work with the DWPII.

Frank

 

[Dwight Elvey]

Hi Frank
It was a BIOS error.
It was using BUSY only. It didn't make
much difference which printer I connected.
If it stayed busy for a little too long, it would
hang.
I don't recall the code but it was obviously wrong
when I looked at it. The data source may not have
been through a windows driver.
Dwight

 

[PhilipA]

Hm, works under DOS 6.22 with the PRINT TSR, though indeed does double linefeed rather than carriage-return. I can live with that

--Phil

 

[Frank S]

Hello Phil,
to suppress the second line feed you only have to send "ESC, 22" (1BH,16H) to the printer.
This disables the line feed when sending a carriage return.
Frank