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Star Micronics NB-15 User's Manual

1. command This command im mediately moves the printhead to the left margin and then prints the remainder of the line from left to right The seven bit dilemma Certain computers but not the IBM PC fortunately don t have the capability to send eight bits on their parallel interface They can only send seven bits This would make it impossible for these computers to use this printer s block graphics characters and special symbols if our engineers hadn t thought of a solution All of these characters have ASCII codes greater than 127 which means that the eighth bit must be on to use them The solution lies in the three control codes given in the following table Table 7 4 Eighth bit controls Turn the eighth bit ON ESC Y Turn the eighth bit OFF ESC Accept the eighth bit as is fro the computer ESC gt Block graphics characters and special symbols Besides the upper and lower case letters and symbols that we are by now familiar with your printer has a whole different set of characters that are for special uses These characters include block graphics for drawing forms and graphs and special sym bols for mathematical engineering and professional uses The special characters are included in two character sets The character set you normally use is called character set 1 The special characters are printed out when you send ASCII codes 160 255 to the printer Your printer also
2. l Ot Gl 0 03 C4 05 06 07 08 08 OA OB OC OD OF OF Live eee eee ooo 16 11 1 230014 15 16 37 18 19 1A 1B 1C 1D JE 1F O ira SPay at Sade Pt 1 we 23 24 25 126 27 28 29 2A 2B 2C 2D PE ZF URSS CD StL 7y By 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 332 3A 38 3C 3D JE 3f 0123456789 gt au 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 4A 4B 4C 4D 4E 4F GABCDEFGHIIKLANG 30 51 S S3 54 SS 56 57 58 3 SA SB SC 5D SE SF PQRSTUYWXYZ 327 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 6A 68 6C 6D 6E 6F Sabcdefghijkimao 70 4 7 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 7A 7B 7C 7D 7E IF parstuvwxyzii su 81 E 83 4 85 86 B 98 89 8A 8B 8C 8D BE BF Vee eee eee 30 31 J 33 94 95 96 97 98 99 SA 3B 9C SD SE OF Au Al A AS AS AS BRE A7 A8 A9 AA AB AC AD AE AF LLL ee BO BI B B3 B4 B5 BE E7 B8 BS BA BB BC BD BE BF co 61 C 3 C4 CS C6 C7 Ce CI CA CB ECO LODO CE GR Beta Zao a oak UO DI D2 D3 D4 D5 D6 D D8 D9 DA DB DC DO DE OF Ea El E2 E3 4 ES EG E7 ES ES EA EN EC ED SEE CEP temario ada FO Fi F FIS F4 FS Fe F Fe FS FA FB FC FD FE FF ob OA Most BASICs however are not quite that straight forward For example the IBM PC prints like the following uo f 2 0 0 07 08 09 OA 0B OC 0D OA OF Lecce eee ee eee uF t 1 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 1B 1C 1D 1E tEro tote acl i Sods acd apse y BCH r4 25 26 27 28 29 2A 2B 2c 2D ZE 2F URSS Ls su JO so 35 36 37 33 39 3A JE 3C 3D JE oF 0123456789 lt gt At 4 al 45 46 47 48 45 4A 4B 4C 4D 4E 4F BABCDEFGHIJKLMNO Sab BA PP e i Bb Be 58 59 SA SB SC SD SE 5F PORST
3. CHR 191 30 LPRINT CHR 179 CHRS 53 CHRS 32 CHRS 32 CHRS 32 CHRS 32 CHRS 179 40 LPRINT CHRS 179 CHRS 32 CHRS 5 CHRS 32 CHRS 5 CHRS 32 CHRS 179 SO LPRINT CHR 179 CHRS 32 CHR 32 CHRS 5 CHRS 32 CHRS 32 CHRS 179 60 LPRINT CHRS 179 CHRS 32 CHRS 5 CHRS 32 CHRS 5 CHRS 32 CHR 179 70 LPRINT CHR 179 CHR 32 CHRS 32 CHRS 32 CHRS 32 CHRS 53 CHRS 179 80 LPRINT CHR 192 CHR 196 CHR 196 CHRS 196 CHRS 196 CHRS 196 CHRS 217 90 LPRINT CHRS 27 7 82 3 128 133 138 143 148 153 158 163 168 173 178 183 188 193 198 203 208 213 218 223 228 233 238 243 248 253 2 AS woo O O pro t NES me e Es laz FS oa PF A MOM 4 129 134 139 144 149 154 159 164 169 174 179 184 189 194 199 204 209 214 219 224 229 234 239 244 249 254 Y GS O amp O Mm amp Ce ha D DDAR MS 4A oS gt 4 130 135 140 145 150 155 160 165 170 175 180 185 190 195 200 205 210 215 220 225 230 235 240 245 250 DQ Dh R 2 o o MO E BDH 131 136 141 146 151 156 161 166 171 176 181 186 191 196 201 206 211 216 221 226 231 236 241 246 251 Figure 7 1 Character set 2 gt fp pt E may gt H 8 4 H oma y b 21 132 137 142 147 152 157 162 167 1
4. THIS IS LINE 117 THIS IS LINE 118 THIS IS LINE 119 THIS IS LINE 120 i l TOTHIS IS CINE 121 THIS IS LINE 122 THIS IS LINE 123 THIS IS LINE 124 THIS IS LINE 125 THIS IS LINE 126 THIS IS LINE 127 THIS IS LINE 128 THIS IS LINE 129 Ly muros PINE JA f i 3 A A RA NE EPR i 63 SETTING LEFT AND RIGHT MARGINS The left and right margins of this printer work just like a typewriter once they are set all the printing is done between them The commands to set the margins are given in the follow ing table Table 6 5 Left and right margin commands Set left margin at column n ESC 1 CHR n Set right margin at column n ESC Q CHR n Try setting the margins with this program 10 Demo of margins 20 GOSUB 70 30 LPRINT CHRS 27 1 CHRS 10 40 LPRINT CHRS 27 Q CHRS 70 50 GOSUB 70 60 END 70 FOR I 1 TO 80 80 LPRINT X 90 NEXT I 100 LPRINT 110 RETURN The first thing that this program does is to branch to the subroutine that starts in line 70 This subroutine prints 80 X s in a row The first time that the subroutine is used all the X s fit in one line Then line 30 sets the left margin to 10 and line 40 sets the right margin to 70 Once again the subroutine is used but this time the X s won t all fit on one line since there is now only room for 60 characters between the margins Run the program The results will lo
5. NB 15 USER S MANUAL AS ata Po y eS Sr AAA eS AN NOT INTENDED FOR SALE PN 80821206 A tite Ret etn etter im tine en Federal Communications Commission Radio Frequency Interference tatement This equipment generates and uses radio frequency energy and if not installed and used properly that is in strict accordance with the manufacturer s instructions may cause in terference to radio and television reception It has been type tested and found to comply with the limits for a Class B computing device in accordance with the specifications in Subpart J of Part 15 of FCC Rules which are designed to provide reasonable protection against such interference in a residential installation However there is no guarantee that interference will not occur in a particular installation If this equipment does cause interference to radio or television reception which can be determined by turning the equipment off and on the user is encouraged to try to correct the interference by one or more of the following measures O Reorient the receiving antenna Relocate the computer with respect to the receiver Move the computer away from the receiver Plug the computer into a different outlet so that computer and receiver are on dif ferent branch circuits If necessary the user should consult the dealer or an experienced radio television techni cian for additional suggestions The user may find the following booklet prepared by
6. O AAN ST ee itt al abrazos DIP switch 2 2 OFF 1 5 15 0123456789 lt gt BABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVUXYZ 1 _ ab t Z amp 0123456789 lt gt 76ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ A _ ab 1 25 0123456789 lt gt RBABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ _ ab 17 2 amp 0123456789 lt gt 2 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ _ ab 1 15 0123456789 lt gt 8ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 1 _ ab L ASZE 0123456789 lt gt 7 ABCDEFGHI JKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 1 _ ab Self test 2 1 25 0123456783 lt gt BABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ NX _ ab 1 5 0123456789 lt gt BABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ X 7_ abe 528 0123456789 lt gt BABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ X _ abcd 25 0123456783 lt gt BABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ X _ abcde 25 0123456789 lt gt 8ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ X _ abcdef 25 0123456789 lt gt 8ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ X _ abcdefg Figure 2 12 The self tests show you what the printer can print Self tests Your printer has two built in programs that printout sample lines of letters numbers and other characters to show you that everything s in good working order Self test 1 is the long version and self test 2 is the short one You can use either one to show the characters available in the printer to check the in stallation of the ribbon
7. 0 There s a new little wrinkle in this program though The semicolons at the end of the lines told BASIC that those lines were to be continued Therefore BASIC didn t send a carriage return and line feed at the end of those lines We just did this to illustrate that all these control codes can be used in the middle of a line It s easy to underline or overline only part of a line Boldface printing Your printer has very good density when it s just printing regularly But sometimes you may want something to stand out from the rest of the page This printer provides a way to do this 43 with boldface printing The following table shows the control codes for getting into and out of boldface mode Table 5 4 Boldface print commands Boldface ON ESC E or ESC G Boldface OFF ESC F or ESC H Try this short program to see the boldface mode 10 Demo of boldface 20 LPRINT CHR 27 E 30 LPRINT This line is BOLDFACE printing 40 LPRINT CHRS 27 F 50 LPRINT This line is normal printing Run this program The results will look like this This line is BOLDFACE printing This line is normal printing Line 20 turns on boldface with ESC E and line 30 prints a line of text In line 40 turns boldface off with ESC F so your printer is set for normal printing Look closely at the different lines of printing First line boldface printing has been printed twic
8. When you run this program you will get like this 86 THIS IS DOUBLE SIZED PRINTING QUAD 9 pin graphics emulation mode As you had learned in Chapter 2 this printer has a unique 9 pin graphics emulation mode You can select this mode with a control code ESC g After you ve entered into the 9 pin graphics emulation mode following commands work in the same manner for the 9 pin printers as shown below ESC A n Sets or defines line spacing to n 72 inch lt ESC 3 n Sets line spacing to n 216 inch ESC TJ n Sends a one time paper feed of n 216 inch ESC j n Sends a one time reverse feed of 2 216 inch THIS IS e SIZED PRINTING meee a e e In addition the relationship between the dot graphics data and the pins in the print head will be changed to suit for 9 pin printers Note You must turn off the power switch to cancel this mode The optional sheet feeder The automatic sheet feeder is a handy option that feeds single cut sheets automatically Work done on cut sheets looks better that done on computer paper and you don t have to tear the ears off each sheet as you must with fan fold paper The automatic sheet feeder feeds a new sheet automatically every time the printer receives or generates a form feed Any time you wish you can turn the auto feed unit on and off by using control codes Table 7 8 Automatic sheet feeder commands ESC
9. e Using the printer on a flat surface e Keeping it out of direct sunlight and away from heat producing appliance e Using it only in temperatures where you are comfortable e Avoiding locations with a lot of dust grease or humidity e Giving it clean electricity Don t connect it to the same circuit used by large noise producing appliances such as refrigerators e Making sure the line voltage is within 10 of the voltage specified on the identification plate WHAT HAVE WE HERE Let s open the carton and take a look at what s inside Check each item in the box against Figure 1 1 to make sure that you have everything there should be six items Figure 1 1 Check to make sure you have all six items 1 Printer 2 Mute cover 3 Paper guide 4 Platen knob 5 Ribbon cartridge and 6 User s manual You should also have a parallel interface board to connect your computer to the printer Also available are a parallel inter face board with extra buffer memory and a serial interface board both optional More on the interfaces later M Removing the printer cover The printer s cover is important for two reasons it keeps dust and dirt away from the printer s delicate mechanism and it absorbs nearly all of the printer s operating sounds Don t take off the cover unless you have to change the ribbon or make an adjustment Removing the printer cover is easy Lift up the back of the cover
10. ia 96 re T 32 4471747 ath 00 4th 4 132 4 n 16 5th 2 mae hie Sth 76 6 6th PG 6h 41772 4p tt Et jm 370255192 7th 18 6 8 or E AS sh 32 da CLCT om 63 6 oh 14 pp Figure 8 8 Character designs for the two graph symbols 97 for user defined characters but a caution is in order Characters with ASCII values below 32 are usually reserved as control codes by both your computer and your printer While these characters can be replaced by user defined characters it should be avoided because of the effect on the normal control codes In our example we ll assign the car a value of 60 which is the code for the character in the ASCII characters A rather ar bitrary selection but this printer doesn t care Our chart would hardly be complete with just a picture of a car so in Figure 8 8 we ve made completed grids for some other symbols a telephone quite a strange mix of characters The in formation on the grids is now completed Download character definition command You ve read through a long explanation of download characters and we haven t even told you the command syntax yet Now the wait is over This is the most complex command in your printer repertoire and now you ve got the necessary knowledge to implement it Here it is ESC amp CHR 0 n1 n2 m0 m1 m2 dl d2 d3 dx Like the other printer s commands it starts with an ESC CHR 27 The next character
11. to enter control O you should hold down the CTRL key while you press the O key That s the letter Oh not the number zero Then just press the return and select P rint to print your report You only need to go through this procedure once each time you use SuperCalc because your printer will stay in compressed print until it s turned off or reset You might also wish to use some of your printer s other features with SuperCalc Find the code for the feature you wish to use in Appendix C and use the same procedure given here USING YOUR PRINTER WITH WORD PROCESSORS Not many word processing programs recognize the advanced features of printers like your printer They usually provide for some method of making bold characters and underlining But your printer can do much more than that The people that write word processing programs do however know that there are a lot of different printers on the market and so they usually but not always provide a way of sending special codes to a printer We will study one example of this to see how a typical word pro 31 cessor handles it Once you understand the concept you should be able to use your program manual to figure out how your word processor does it The program that we will study is the EasyWriter word pro cessor for the IBM Personal Computer This uses a fairly typical method of handling special codes Generally word pro cessing programs don t want you to put non printing co
12. to use them e Paper selection and loading e Adjustment e Testing printer operation CONTROLS AND PARTS OF THE PRINTER Parts of the printer First we ll go over the parts of the printer You saw most of these when you unpacked your printer Now we ll give you a brief explanation of what they do PRINTER COVER This protects the ribbon and the print head from dust and dirt and cuts down the sound of the printer MUTE COVER This reduces the sound of the printer by in stalling on the printer cover PAPER GUIDE As you ve guessed this flat plastic molding guides the paper during printing it is raised for single sheets and lies flat for sprocket feed paper POWER CORD This cord connects the printer to its power source usually a wall outlet It s located at the left rear of the printer PRINT HEAD This is the device that does the actual print ing Like the strike lever in a typewriter tiny stiff wires in the print head hit the paper through a ribbon TRACTOR FEED UNIT The drive gear and sprockets of the tractor feed unit move sprocket feed paper through the printer PLATEN This is the rubber cylinder that carries paper to the print head 10 Interface cover Power cord Figure 2 1 Front and rear views of the printer INTERFACE COVER On the back of the printer this con ceals and protects the interface board The cover is cut away to expose the external conn
13. BASIC statement PRINT CHR 65 will print an A on the terminal In some other programming languages ASCII codes are refer red to by their hex value Hex is short for hexadecimal which is a base 16 number system our usual numbers are base 10 Since hex needs 16 digits it uses the numbers 0 through 9 and then it uses the letters A through F for digits The ASCII code for the letter A is 41 in hex Of course most of the time we don t even need to think about this code system Our computers are smart enough to know that when we press the A key on our keyboard we want to print the letter A The computer takes care of all the rest But there are a number of ASCII codes that don t have keys on the keyboard The most important of these codes are the codes that ASCII values below 32 These codes control many of this printer s functions Even though there aren t keys for these codes most keyboards can send these codes It s done by holding down the control key many times marked CTRL and 29 simultaneously pressing a letter key The particular letter key that is pressed determines what code is sent Control and A sends ASCII code 1 control and B sends ASCII code 2 and so on Because of the way they are created these codes are often referred to as control A etc So there are four common ways of referring to the same set of codes the character or name of the code the decimal ASCII val
14. CHR 25 R or R Y gt gt gt 87 When the automatic sheet feeder is installed you must set the DIP switch 2 4 on to detect the paper out condition In addition following functions are ignored when the auto matic sheet feeder is installed Setting of the page length Top and bottom margins Vertical tab settings Caution The five character commands e g 0 work as the automatic sheet feeder control codes whenever the automatic sheet feeder is mounted on the printer e g LLISTing On the other hand the automatic sheet feeder is not mounted on the printer those five characters are printed as regular characters Reading a hex dump We ve seen how to make a hex dump in Chapter 2 but it s not really clear what we can do with one We need a little background first The BASIC in some computers changes ASCII codes before they send them to the printer If you run into problem because of this try this hex dump to check the ASCII codes First turn off the printer and run the following program Hold down both the Paper Feed key and Mode key and turn on the printer 10 FOR I 0 TO 255 20 LPRINT CHRS I 30 NEXT 1 40 LPRINT 50 END If your system passes the codes directly to the printer without changing them you will get like this You can print out the last remaining line in the print buffer by putting the printer off line with the On Line key i
15. Everything following any of them will be enlarged as shown below until the cancel code is entered Table 7 7 Big character commands Double high enlarged print ESC h CHR 1 Quad high enlarged print ESC h CHR 2 Cancel enlarged print ESC h CHR 0 Try this program to see the big characters 10 BIG character 20 LPRINT LPRINT 30 LPRINT CHRS 27 1 40 LPRINT THIS IS 50 LPRINT CHRS 27 h CHRS 1 60 LPRINT DOUBLE 70 LPRINT CHRS 27 h CHRS 0 80 LPRINT SIZED PRINTING 90 LPRINT THIS IS 100 LPRINT CHRS 27 h CHRS 2 110 LPRINT QUAD 120 LPRINT CHRS 27 h CHRS 0 130 LPRINT SIZED PRINTING 140 LPRINT CHRS 27 0 When you run this program you will get like this TUIS 13 DOUBLE SIZED PRINTING QUAD As you can see when the big character command is used the baseline for each character does not align When you want to align the baseline try this program SIZED PRINTING 10 Demo of aliging big characters 20 LPRINT CHRS 27 1 30 LPRINT THIS IS 40 LPRINT CHRS 27 j CHRS 24 50 LPRINT CHRS 27 h CHRS 1 60 LPRINT DOUBLE 70 LPRINT CHRS 27 h CHRS Q 80 LPRINT SIZED PRINTING 90 LPRINT LPRINT LPRINT 100 LPRINT THIS IS 110 LPRINT CHRS 27 j CHRS 72 120 LPRINT CHRS 27 h CHRS 2 130 LPRINT QUAD 140 LPRINT CHRS 27 h CHRS 0 150 LPRINT SIZED PRINTING 160 LPRINT CHRS 27 0
16. Figure 1 5 lightly press the cartridge down until the two holder springs snap shut to hold the cartridge firmly in place 4 Check that the cartridge fits so that the drive pins engage the cartridge teeth 5 Gently slide the print head carriage manually all the way to your right or left until the ribbon automatically slips down into its proper place between the print head and the silver ribbon guide 6 Put the printer cover back on and you re finished A special switch on the printer prevents the printer from working when the cover is off E Installing the mute cover The mute cover reduces the printer s operating sounds Mounting the mute cover onto the printer cover is easy Note the position of the guide pins on the mute cover as shown in Figure 1 7 Then hold the mute cover at each end and insert the guide pins into the cutout hooks of the printer cover Finally lay down the free end of the mute cover backwards To remove it just reverse the procedure Mute cover Printer cover Figure 1 7 Install the mute cover by holding vertically then lay down on the printer cover Up to this point we ve been clearing the decks for action so to speak There are only a couple more things left to do before we can start printing install the interface board and the font cartridge Installing the interface board Interface cover Interface board Figure 1 8 Slide the I F board int
17. LPRINT CHR 27 2 The results are the same as previous one You may wonder why they picked 1 60 of an inch as the incre ment for the line spacing command There s a good reason the dots that the printer makes are 1 180 inch apart So this means that you can vary the line spacing in increments as fine as three dots unless you want finer spacing like one dot spacing The ESC 3 CHR command sets the line spacing in in crements of 1 180 inch Change line 40 in your program so it is like this 40 LPRINT CHRS 27 3 CHRS 1 and run the program again Now the results will look like this IBN The program works just the same as before but the line spac ing are just one third what they were This is because ESC gt 3 CHR n sets the line spacing to 2 180 inch Table 6 2 shows all the line spacing commands including several shortcut commands for commonly used line spacings S TO 1 6 INCH 97 Table 6 2 Line spacing commands Set line spacing to 1 6 inch or use ESC A definitio ESC j CHR n Moving down the page without a carriage return So far all the commands that move the paper also move the print head to the left margin And normally this is what you want Sometimes though you may wish to move down the page without moving the printhead back to the left margin The following commands do just that The lt ESC J CHR m command causes the printer
18. in Chapter 7 include e Printer s bell e Master reset e Uni directional printing e International character sets e Printing BIG characters The optional sheet feeder e Reading a hex dump In the previous chapters we have learned about several groups of control codes In this chapter we will look at more con trol codes These codes don t fit neatly into any of the groupings that we have studied but they add a lot of capability to your printer So here goes Now hear this You may have heard the printer s bell if you have ever run out of paper And you may have wondered why it s called a bell when it beeps instead of ringing It s a long story that goes back to the early days of computers when teletype machines were us ed for computer terminals These mechanical marvels had a bell in them that could be heard for blocks This bell was used to signal the operator that somethings needed attention The code that the computer sent to the teletype machine to ring the bell was reasonably enough called a bell code Well the name bell code is still with us even if the bell has changed to a beeper and a lot of people still call the beeper a bell even if it doesn t sound like one So with our trivia lesson out of the way let s see how we can ring the bell The code to sound the bell is CHR 7 which is ASCII code 7 or BEL Any time your printer receives this code it will sound the bell for a quarter of a secon
19. is CONDENSED PICA pitch This line is NORMAL ELITE pitch This line is NORMAL PICA pitch This line is EXPANDED CONDENSED ELITE This line is EXPANDED CONDENSED PICA This is EXPANDED ELITE This is EXPANDED PICA Proportional printing Have you ever noticed in books and magazines Doesn t it look nice The main reason is that each character is given an amount of space proportional to its actual width A typewriter and most printer on the other hand give every character the same amount of space no matter how wide it is Pica pitch for example gives a w and an i 1 10 of an inch each Look these letters closely and you ll see that a w is two or three times as wide as an i Well you too enjoy professional looking proportional print ing You can turn proportional printing on and off with the following command 49 Table 5 9 Proportional commands Proportional ON ESC gt p 1 Proportional OFF Try this program to see how the proportional spacing works ESC p 0 10 Demo of proportional printing 20 LPRINT CHRS 27 p1 30 LPRINT This line is PROPORTIONAL printing 40 LPRINT CHRS 27 p0 50 LPRINT This line is NORMAL PICA printing When you run this program you should get this This line is PROPORTIONAL printing This line is NORMAL PICA printing In this program line 20 turns on the proportional printing with ESC p 1 Line 30 prints a li
20. k CHR 1 command Line 40 prints a sample with the LQ characters in the font cartridge installed on the font slot 1 Line 50 selects the font cartridge slot 2 with ESC k CHR 2 command Line 60 prints a sample with the font slot 2 characters before line 70 switches printer back to internal LQ characters with an ESC k CHR 0 command You can control the font styles with the extra functions with the control panel Table 5 2 Font selection commands E Underlines and overlines Not only your printer print all characters in both draft and LQ but it can underline or overline them too The control codes are shown in Table 5 3 42 Table 5 3 Underline and overline commands Underline ON ESC 1 Underline OFF ESC 0 Overline ON ESC _ 1 Overline OFF ESC _ 0 Again that s simple Let s try it with this program 10 Demo of underlining and overlining 20 LPRINT Demo of 30 LPRINT CHRS 27 1 40 LPRINT UNDELINED 50 LPRINT CHRS 27 0 60 LPRINT and 70 LPRINT CHRS 27 _1 80 LPRINT OVERLINED 90 LPRINT CHRS 27 _0 100 LPRINT printing It should come out like this Demo of UNDELINED and OVERLINED printing In this program underline is turned on in line 30 with ESC 1 and then off in line 50 with ESC 0 The overline is turned on in line 70 with ESC __ 1 and then off in line 90 with ESC __
21. left so you can align them with the holes in the paper Feed the end of the paper into the slot next to the platen cover plate Fit the holes in the paper over the sprocket pins so the paper is even and clamp the sprocket units in place Check that the paper is still positioned correctly and close the sprocket covers Figure 2 8 The Paper Empty indicator should be glown Turn the platen knob to feed the paper until the indicator goes out Now turn the platen knob the other way just a bit until the indicator glows again Sprocket cover Clamp lever El Figure 2 8 Ready to run with sprocket feed paper 18 11 Set the release lever to the auto feed setting The printer will advance the paper automatically 12 When the paper stops set the release lever for sprocket feed paper again 13 Finally install the paper guide on the printer You can in stall it either to lie flat as shown in Figure 2 8 or to raise as shown in Figure 2 9 Now you re ready to roll Figure 2 9 You can raise the paper guide with sprocket feed paper ADJUSTING THE PRINT HEAD The distance between the print head and the platen must be adjusted to accommodate papers of different thicknesses To make this adjustment move the adjustment lever which is under the printer cover and immediately in front of the release lever Figure 2 10 Pulling the adjustment lever towa
22. normal draft characters even though they may print with more dots and may even be designed for pro portional spacing Letter quality download characters If you select letter quality printing with the ESC x 1 com mand or by the control panel you can design your own characters on a grid which is 15 dots wide by 24 dots high Each character can be as wide as 18 dots including space on either side of the character The dot columns are spaced closer 105 together horizontally than draft style dot columns the horizon tal dot spacing is 1 180 inch when printing LQ characters as opposed to 1 120 inch for draft characters Unlike draft characters there are no restrictions on which dots can print This coupled with the closer dot spacing allows you to design characters with higher resolution The drawback is speed Normal letter quality characters print more slowly than draft characters the same is true of LQ download characters 106 MEMO
23. right side of the printer case Look at the hole in the knob See the flat side of the hole Match the flat sur face in the knob with the flat side of the shaft and press the knob onto the shaft firmly Turn the knob a few times to make sure that the platen rotates smoothly and easily E Installing the ribbon cartridge This printer uses a neat easy to change ribbon cartridge so you don t have to spend a lot of time threading a ribbon And get ting your hands all dirty to boot Telling you how to put in a ribbon is like explaining how to tie your shoelaces it takes a lot longer to tell than to do You can just follow the illustrations if you wish they ll tell you all you really need to know Or if you feel better following written instructions read on Figure 1 5 Press the cartridge into place until the holding springs snap into place 1 Turn off the power and remove the printer cover 2 Now slide the print head gently to the center of the printer Warning The print head gets hot during operation so let it cool off before you touch it lt lt Ribbon guide SS gt ON S Ribbon Print head Figure 1 6 All you have to do is to slide the print head carriage manually to your right or left then the ribbon slips down by itself into its proper position 3 Using the guide holders as a fulcrum with the ribbon fac ing away from you as shown in
24. word processing programs to spreadsheet programs to accounting programs Many of these programs have a routine for describing your printer These routines are often in installation programs They typically give you a choice of printers or printer types to pick from Some typical descriptions that you might pick for your printer are TTY type printer with backspace IBM dot matrix printer Centronics type printer Dot matrix ASCII printer Your printer should work fine with any of these descriptions Some printer lists are not very clear and may not include anything that you think describes your printer If you can t decide which description best fits your printer we recommend that you narrow the list to two or three choices you can quickly eliminate all the daisywheel printer types and then experiment You won t hurt anything if you guess wrong it just won t work right This should quickly tell you if your guess is right If all else fails though your printer dealer will be happy to give you some advice Some programs don t ask you what kind of printer you have but instead they ask some questions about what your printer can do Here are the answers to the most asked questions Your printer can do a backspace Your printer can do a hardware form feed With the questions answered you are ready to start printing Read the manual that came with your commercial software to see how to mak
25. 20 sets the form length to 7 inches After line 30 prints line 40 sends a form feed advance the paper to the top of the next form Line 50 then prints its message After you have run this program turn off the printer and ad just the top of form position When you turn the printer back on the page length will reset to its normal setting usually 11 inches BOTTOM MARGIN Many programs that you use a printer don t keep track of where they are printing on the page This causes a problem when you get to the bottom of a page because these programs just keep on printing right over the perforation This makes it very hard to read especially if a line happens to fall right on the perforation And if you separate the pages then you are really in trouble Of course your printer has a solution to this predicament This printer can keep track of the position on the page and advance the paper so that you won t print too near the perforation There is a command to do this The control codes to set and cancel are given in the following table Table 6 4 Bottom margin commands Control code ESC N CHRS n ESC O When you set the bottom margin with ESC N CHR m the value of n tells the printer how many blank lines should be left at the bottom of the page Let s try a simple application to see how these margins work Enter this program which will print 150 lines without bottom margins 10 Demo of bottom margi
26. 63 or 222 characters line PRINT PITCH KEY Selects one of the four available character pitches 12 TOF KEY Ejects the current sheet feeds a new sheet and moves the print head to the left margin PAPER FEED KEY Advances the paper one line at a time when the On Line indicator is off If you hold the key down you can get consecutive line feeds one after the other ON LINE KEY and INDICATOR Glows green when the printer is ready to receive data from your computer on line When the printer is off line it sends a signal to the computer in dicating that it cannot accept data Pressing the On Line key switches the printer on line and off lime When you turn the power switch on the printer is placed on line automatically Extra functions There are twelve more functions that are not directly specified on the control panel You can use seven of them by pressing a key when you turn on the power five others are ac tivated by pressing two control keys at once For details please refer to the end of this chapter NW Other controls There are other controls not connected to the control panel Some of the more important ones are POWER SWITCH The switch that turns the printer on and off is at the back on the left side PLATEN KNOB This knob is at the middle of the right side and lets you turn the platen by hand just like a typewriter Caution Turn the platen knob only with the Power switch off Turning the
27. 72 177 182 187 192 197 202 207 212 217 222 227 232 237 242 247 252 gt 0 DM A ame X 10 O K lt O k r Ir T Y 83 If you have a 7 bit interface add the following lines to the pro gram given above 15 LPRINT CHRS 27 gt 95 LPRINT CHRS 27 In this program line 10 selects character set 2 so that all the graphics characters can be used including the club symbol Then lines 20 80 print the 5 of clubs figure Line 90 cancels character set 2 which is the same as selecting character set 1 Here is what this program prints E International character sets Your printer is a multi lingual printer for it can speak in eleven languages Your printer changes languages by changing 12 characters that are different for the different languages These sets of characters are called international character sets The control codes to select the international character sets are given in Table 7 5 Table 7 5 International character set commands ESC R CHR 5 ESC R CHR 10 84 The characters that change are shown beneath their ASCII code in Table 7 6 Table 7 6 International character sets p fujel a e a a Ea Ea Ba 5 Ea Ea EM Printing BIG characters You can even enlarge your character sets for attention grabb ing headings or special effects There are two commands you can use
28. HR 38 CHR 0 CHRS 60 CHR 60 CHRS 1 CHRS 9 CHRS 2 CHRS 1 CHR 240 CHRS 0 CHRS 6 CHRS 8 CHRS 0 CHR 8 CHRS 100 CHRS 0 CHR 0 CHRS 0 CHR 0 CHRS 24 CHRS 99 CHRS 128 CHR 0 CHR 0 CHR 0 CHRS 31 CHRS 255 CHRS 192 CHRS 0 CHR 0 CHRS 0 CHRS 6 CHR 3 CHR 0 Now let s send the information to the printer The following program will send the character definitions for all two characters to the printer Before you enter the program turn off the printer and set the DIP switch 2 3 off Otherwise your printer will ignore your download definitions After you set the DIP switch correctly enter the program and run it 10 LPRINT CHRS 27 x0 20 LPRINT CHRS 27 amp CHRS 0 CHRS 60 CHRS 61 30 FOR N 60 TO 61 40 FOR M 1 TO 30 50 READ MM 60 LPRINT CHRS MM 70 NEXT M 80 NEXT N 90 LPRINT 100 END 110 DATA 1 9 2 100 0 120 DATA 0 0 O 255 192 130 DATA 0 O O 6 3 O 2 14 0 0 0 31 192 16 1 240 0 6 8 O 8 24 99 128 0 0 0 31 96 0 150 DATA 4 132 64 16 10 0 4 132 64 18 96 0 160 DATA 0 31 192 14 0 O 99 When you run this program it looks like nothing happens That s OK We ll see why in just a moment Save this program We ll need it again shortly PRINTING DOWNLOAD CHARACTERS You ve now defined and sent two characters to your pri
29. MM 80 NEXT M 90 NEXT N 100 LPRINT 110 DATA 1 9 2 1 240 O 6 8 O 8 100 0 120 DATA 0 O 0 24 99 128 0 0 0 31 255 192 130 DATA 0 0 O 6 3 O 140 DATA 1 9 2 14 0 O O 31 192 18 96 O 150 DATA 4 132 64 16 10 0 4 132 64 18 96 0 160 DATA 0 31 192 14 0 0 170 LPRINT CHR 27 D CHR 11 CHR 0 180 LPRINT CHRS 27 h CHRS 1 190 LPRINT DIFFUSION RANGES OF 200 LPRINT CARS amp TELEPHONES 210 LPRINT CHR 27 h CHRS 0 220 LPRINT CHRS 27 31 CHRS 0 230 LPRINT USA CHRS 9 240 FOR I 0 TO 681 STEP 50 250 LPRINT CHRS 60 260 NEXT 1 270 LPRINT 280 LPRINT CHRS 9 290 FOR I 0 TO 781 STEP 50 300 LPRINT CHRS 61 310 NEXT I 320 LPRINT 330 LPRINT GERMANY CHRS 9 340 FOR I 0 TO 412 STEP 50 350 LPRINT CHR 60 360 NEXT 1 370 LPRINT 380 LPRINT CHRS 9 390 FOR I 0 TO 488 STEP 50 400 LPRINT CHRS 61 410 NEXT I 420 LPRINT 430 LPRINT JAPAN CHRS 9 446 FOR I C TO 347 STEP 50 450 LPRINT CHR 60 460 NEXT I 470 LPRINT 480 LPRINT CHRS 9 490 FOR I 0 TO 493 STEP 50 500 LPRINT CHR 61 510 NEXT I 520 LPRINT 530 LPRINT CHRS 9 540 SCALES 550 FOR I 2 TO 8 STEP 2 560 LPRINT SCALES 570 NEXT 1 580 LPRINT 590 LPRINT CHRS 9 600 FOR I 2 TO 8 STEP 2 610 LPRINT 1 620 NEXT I 630 LPRINT CHR 27 0 CHRS 0 640 LPRINT CHR 27 SO 650 LPRINT CHR 9 100 UNITS 1000 PER
30. O 19 THIS LINE SPACING IS SET TO 20 THIS LINE SPACING IS SET TO 1 6 INCH Line 40 defines and changes the line spacing The command ESC A CHR n defines the line spacing as n 60 of an inch the ESC 2 command changes the line spacing to the amount defined by the previous ESC A The loop that is started in line 20 increases the value of the variable I in the program each time it is executed So the line spacing increases as the pro gram continues Line 30 shortcuts the loop when I 13 since BASIC won t let us send CHR 13 without adding an unwanted CHR 10 to it Finally the ESC A CHR 10 and ESC 2 commands in line 80 reset the line spacing to 6 lines per inch 10 60 or 1 6 inch NOTE When you look the results closely the line spacing with the ESC A CHR 12 command sets the line spacing to 1 6 inch instead of setting 12 60 inch This is because that the 9 pin printers are normally sets the line spacing to 12 72 inch 1 6 inch with this command and most software programs use this command to set the line spacing to 1 6 inch and we ve thought the compatibility with those programs The same reason for the ESC 3 CHR 36 command 56 When you are using your printer with the DIP switch 2 2 off the ESC A CHR m works to change the line spacing without ESC 2 So in this case change the following lines as shown below 40 LPRINT CHR 27 A CHRS I 80
31. PRINT CHRS 7 150 LPRINT CHR 27 20 CHR 0 160 LPRINT CHR 27 I0 You should have printed out the character we defined instead of beep 104 THE PRINT MODE AND THE DOWNLOAD CHARACTERS In the example program above before we defined the new characters we selected the Draft print mode By doing this we caused user defined characters to print as draft characters because user defined characters assume the mode that is in ef fect at the time they are defined The modes that affect user defined characters are draft and letter quality printing The ESC x n command selects be tween draft n 0 and letter quality n 1 The commands for defining characters selecting the download character set and copying ROM are exactly the same for each of the user defined print styles The print mode in ef fect when the characters are defined determines the mode of the user defined characters The print mode determines the size of the grid upon which the characters are designed and the speed at which they print Table 8 1 shows the different character grid sizes for each of the print modes Table 8 1 Download character design grids Mati Draft characters 9 R E Draft download characters As you ve seen draft characters are designed on a grid which is 9 dots wide by 24 dots high plus up to three columns of dots for space between characters Draft download characters print at the same high speed as
32. RS 14 90 LPRINT EXPANDED mode 100 LPRINT automatically turns off at the end of a line 46 Demonstration of EXPANDED printing Notice that EXPANDED mode automatically turns off at the end of a line Expanded print set with CHR 14 is automatically cancelled at the end of the line This is convenient in many applications such as for one line titles Note that you didn t need to put an ESC in front of the CHR 14 although ESC CHR 14 works just the same You can also cancel one line expanded print before a carriage return with CHR 20 as done in line 50 Sometimes you may wish to stay in expanded print for more than one line Change your program to this 10 Demo of permanent expanded node 20 LPRINT CHRS 27 W1 30 LPRINT Permanent expanded 40 LPRINT mode stays on until 50 LPRINT it is 60 LPRINT CHRS 27 WO 70 LPRINT turned off Now the results look like this Permanent expanded mode stays on umt i L it i s turned off When you turn on expanded print with ESC W 1 it stays on until you turn it off with ESC W 0 Table 5 7 Expanded print commands 47 E Condensed print Each of the print pitches also can be condensed to its normal width This is called condensed print Try this program to see how it works 10 Demo of condensed pitch 20 LPRINT Demonstration of 30 LPRINT CHRS 15 40 LPRINT CONDENSED 50 LPRINT CHRS 18 60 LPRIN
33. SONS 660 LPRINT CHRS 27 T DIFFUSION RANGES OF CARS amp TELEPHONES USA qqaqgdeadtaeegages BSSSSSSSSEABBRBSS GERMANY qandqaaas BSASBAABSS JAPAN qaqegaqaq BASSAS RSAS tot tr tr toto tote da 2 4 6 8 100 UNITS 1000 PERSONS 103 Note that we didn t have to re enter the download characters since they were already sent to the printer with the first pro gram They will stay with the printer until you download new characters to replace them or turn the printer off Even the ESC command which initializes the printer does not destroy the contents of download RAM How to print the characters in control code area As explained earlier you can define characters with ASCII values below 32 But you cannot printout those characters with normal usage This is inconvenient to us even we can define download characters in that range So we have made a com mand to print those characters ESC T CHR 7 This command is used to print the characters if n 49 or to select as the control codes if n 48 Let s try it out Enter this program 10 LPRINT CHR 27 x0 20 LPRINT CHRS 27 amp CHRS 0 CHRS 7 CHRS 7 30 FOR M 1 TO 30 40 READ MM 50 LPRINT CHRS MM 60 NEXT M 70 LPRINT 90 DATA 1 9 2 31 253 64 32 1 128 80 5 0 100 DATA 168 2 128 80 133 0 168 74 0 80 52 0 110 DATA 32 8 0 0 0 OQ 120 LPRINT CHRS 27 1 CHRS 0 130 LPRINT CHR 27 11 140 L
34. T printing Demonstration of CONDENSED printing Condensed print set with CHR 15 stays on until you turn it off with CHR 18 Note that you don t need to put an ESC in front of the CHR 15 although ESC CHR 15 works just the same Table 5 8 Condensed print commands Condensed ON CHR 15 or ESC CHR 15 Condensed OFF CHR 18 By combining expanded print and condensed print with the two pitches this printer has eight different character widths available Enter this program to see how the print pitches expanded print and condensed print can be combined 10 Demo of various print pitches 20 LPRINT CHRS 15 30 LPRINT CHRS 27 M 40 LPRINT This line is CONDENSED ELITE pitch 50 LPRINT CHRS 27 P 60 LPRINT This line is CONDENSED PICA pitch 70 LPRINT CHRS 18 80 LPRINT CHRS 27 M 90 LPRINT This line is NORMAL ELITE pitch 100 LPRINT CHRS 27 P 110 LPRINT This line is NORMAL PICA pitch 120 LPRINT CHRS 27 W1 130 LPRINT CHRS 15 140 LPRINT CHRS 27 M 150 LPRINT This line is EXPANDED CONDENSED ELITE 160 LPRINT CHRS 27 P 170 LPRINT This line is EXPANDED CONDENSED PICA 180 LPRINT CHRS 18 190 LPRINT CHRS 27 M 200 LPRINT This is EXPANDED ELITE 210 LPRINT CHRS 27 P 220 LPRINT This is EXPANDED PICA 230 LPRINT CHRS 27 WO Here s what you should get from this program This line is CONDENSED ELITE pitch This line
35. UVWXYZ MJ _ vo h Go 65 66 67 68 69 GA 68 6C 6D SE 6F abcdefghijkIimno fu el Ta 75 76 77 78 79 7A 7B TC 7D 7E 7F pgrstuvexyz fi BL 1 BS 86 87 88 89 8A 8B BC 8D 8E BE IA ey hecy Da Reiss gn 31 3 395 96 97 98 99 JA SB 90 9D DE S rr e AGO M AS Ab AF AB A9 AA AB AC AD AE BE Wath yaad isl a Ave Soa ches tit Br ES 66 B E8 B9 BA BB BC BD BE BF Gy Ga cs CE C cB cS CA CB CC CD CE CF oo DI u DS b6 D7 D8 D9 DA DB DC DD DE DF to El E E5 E6 E7 ES E9 EA EB EC ED EE EF ra 1 r FS FE F Fe ORS FA CRBS ECs CRDi TRES RR 0 aaa ub IA Notice that your printer is receiving decimal code 13 hex 0D is coming with hex 0A which is really decimal 10 In addition your printer does not receive decimal code 26 hex 1A Your printer prints hex numbers 16 per line with printing the characters on the right side If it receives less than 16 it sits in a holding pattern awaiting more data Taking the printer off line dumps the characters to the paper To debug a program quickly just use the hex dump capabili ty Appendix B will help you translate the hex codes to ASCII equivalents CHAPTER 8 CREATING YOUR OWN CHARACTERS Subjects we ll cover in Chapter 8 include e Designing your own characters e Printing your own characters e Print mode and the download characters In the previous chapters of this manual you ve learned how to control the printer to give dozens of different typefaces By us ing various combinations of p
36. an do but even they may depend on what computer you have In Microsoft BASIC we can list all the steps in a program by entering LIST This lists them on the CRT screen if we want to print them on a printer we prefix the command with an L enter LLIST The Microsoft BASIC command for outputting information is PRINT Like the LIST command this displays the information on the CRT screen so we have to add an L gt LPRINT if we want to use the printer Just put whatever you want to print be tween quotes and after LPRINT anything enclosed in quotes is called a character string For example we would use LPRINT Hello to output Hello to the printer We ll see later how to 34 LPRINT things other than character strings We started with Microsoft BASIC because it is the most wide ly used version of BASIC around The programs in this manual are written in Microsoft BASIC so they should run on most com puters But if strange things happen when you try to run a pro gram check the BASIC manual that came with your computer Let s talk about Apple II computers for a minute These enormously popular computers use their own brand of BASIC To use an Apple II enter the following PR 1 PR 1 LIST PRINT Hello PR 0 PR 0 The PR41 tells the Apple to send everything to the printer the LIST or PRINT command sends it and the PR 0 returns output to the screen Other computers notably the Commodore C 64 require you to
37. and in the notches provided for it j Figure 2 6 You can insert a sheet of paper by using the release lever 16 Align a sheet of paper on the guide along the adjuster Turn on the power switch The Paper Empty indicator will glow because there is no paper Now set the release lever to the auto feed setting the top position The printer will advance the paper automatically When the paper stops set the release lever for single sheets again To align paper that is not in straight e Set the release lever to the adjustment setting e Straighten the paper and adjust it for the margins you want e Move the release lever back to its original setting Remember you can also use the optional automatic sheet feeder for single sheets E Loading sprocket feed paper This is the familiar computer paper with the holes along the sides and perforations between the sheets It is also called sprocket punched fan fold or just plain computer paper It can be as narrow as 4 and up to 15 5 wide 1 10 Turn on the printer and set the release lever for sprocket feed paper 2 If the paper guide is installed remove it 3 4 Open the sprocket covers on the right and left sprocket Place a stack of fan fold paper behind the printer units as shown in Figure 2 7 Flip the clamp levers backward This allows the two sprocket units to move freely right and
38. and paper and to check the adjustment of the head to platen gap Best of all you don t have to wait another minute you can print the self test without hooking up the printer to your com puter It s as simple as 1 2 3 1 Plug in the printer don t turn it on yet 2 Insert a sheet of paper or sprocket paper either one 3 While holding down one of the following keys turn on the power switch 21 gt _ abcdefghijkimnopqrstuvwxyz i Ciieddadscesei i AAR eESCOUUYOUCERR FSi ou TOONSPPENst2 lt Jez oe fres _ abcdef ghijklmnopaqrstuvwxyz 1 Cii adadg eel i LAAERZ6Gd0NYOUCEFRF ALOU THONEaGENBt25 fje A9 u abcdefghijklmnopgrstuvwxyz Cu adadg niTi AA RE000UUyOUCE FRIA OU riensbopenari2 lt Jrz Jn _ abcdefghijklmnopgrstuvwxyz Cui dadgecoii1A AEREO 0000 yDUCE FR A 08NS0pENat 2 lt 5 Ji 402 _abcdefghi jkimnopqrstuvwxyz i Ciieddadcseai i iAAbe sooduyouce R raion TEONEOPENELZS Jr pra _ abcdef ghi jklmnopqrstuvwxyz i Cii adadcg eel i LAAEeEGOOUUYOUCL FRSA Ou PONE OPENS fJ x N92 a cdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz i edef ghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz i cedefghi jklmnopqrstuvwxyz i 7 cedefghijkinnopqrstuvwxyz i cedefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz i edefghi jklmnopqrstuvwxyz i cdefghijkImnopqrstuvwxyz 1 amp 0123456789 lt gt ABCDEFGH defghijkimnopqrstuvwxyz i amp 0123456789 lt gt ABCDEFGHI efghijkimnopqrs
39. ask to use mostly standard characters with just a few special characters thrown in This command copies all the ASCII characters from the standard character ROM into download RAM ESC CHR 0 CHR 0 CHR 0 Since it will copy all characters into download area it will wipe out any characters that are already there So it s important to send this command to the printer before you send any download characters you want to define With that in mind add this line to the program we used to send the characters to your printer 5 LPRINT CHRS 27 CHR 0 CHRS 0 CHRS 0 Now try the download printout test program again Your results look like Figure 8 9 nae ia 0123458789 48 gt eet reed teh he abcdefghijkimnopaqrstuvexyz i shane is UN NTT OTE TPES TECTIA iid D bP ezoertonsegeneres sees dees Figure 8 9 Printout of the download character set into which all the ASCII characters have been copied and the and have been changed a aara dd id ae eg a ee ee ME eT eee ee ye ee ee eat ae 101 To demonstrate how to use these characters let s use this character set to print a small graph This program which has been built around the first program in this chapter will do just that 10 LPRINT CHRS 27 x0 20 LPRINT CHRS 27 CHRS O CHRS 0 CHRS 0 30 LPRINT CHR 27 amp CHRS 0 CHRS 60 CHRS 61 40 FOR N 60 TO 61 50 FOR M 1 TO 30 60 READ MM 70 LPRINT CHRS
40. channel n0 ESC gt CHR n0 You can store up to eight channels of tab stops They are numbered from 0 to 7 If you have already stored a set using ESC B command your printer has labelled it as channel 0 Try this program how to see the vertical tab channels work 10 Demo of vertical tab channels 20 LPRINT CHRS 27 b CHRS 1 CHRS 10 CHRS 20 CHRS 0 30 LPRINT CHRS 27 b CHRS 2 CHRS 15 CHRS 25 CHRS 0 40 LPRINT CHRS 27 b CHRS 3 CHRS 17 CHRS 28 CHRS 0 50 Use vertical tab channels 60 FOR I 1 TO 3 70 LPRINT TOP OF FORM 80 LPRINT CHRS 27 CHRs I 90 LPRINT CHRS 11 100 LPRINT 1ST TAB OF CHANNEL I 110 LPRINT CHRS 11 71 120 LPRINT 2ND TAB OF CHANNEL I 130 LPRINT CHRS 12 140 NEXT I 150 LPRINT CHR 27 e 160 END When you run this program you should get like this P O ORM TOP OF FO TOP OF FORM 1ST TAB OF CHANNEL 1 1ST TAB OF CHANNEL 2 1ST TAB OF CHANNEL 3 2ND TAB OF CHANNEL 1 2ND TAB OF CHANNEL 2 2ND TAB OF CHANNEL 3 In this program we set tabs at 10 and 20 in channel 1 in line 20 In line 30 we set tabs 15 and 25 in channel 2 and in line 40 we set tabs 17 and 28 in channel 3 Because the channels are stored you must make the printer to recall one before you use it so we used ESC CHR n0 in line 80 MEMO CHAPTER 7 SPECIAL FEATURES OF THE PRINTER Subjects we ll cover
41. command work 10 Demo of print positions 20 LPRINT 1st Line 1st Column 30 LPRINT CHRs 27 f1 CHRS 3 40 LPRINT 4th Line lst Column 50 LPRINT CHRS 27 f0 CHRS 7 60 LPRINT 5th Line 7th Column 70 LPRINT CHRS 27 1 CHRS 3 80 LPRINT CHRS 27 f0 CHRS 5 90 LPRINT 8th Line 5th Column 100 END In this program line 30 sends a one time vertical tab with ESC f 1 command Line 50 sends a one time horizontal tab with ESC f 0 command Finally line 70 and line 80 send one time vertical tab and one time horizontal tab so the line 90 prints text at the specified position ist Line 1st Column 4th Line 1st Column Sth Line 7th Column 8th Line 5th Column aye ee Ee Se 70 Table 6 9 Vertical tab commands Advance paper to next tab position CHR 11 ESC B CHR x1 Set tical tab CHRSI2 CHRO ESC e 1 CHR n One time vertical tab ESC f 1 CHR n Vertical tab channels Vertical tab channels are especially helpful in two situations The first occurs when you are writing a program to accompany a preprinted form that can accommodate various types of responces The second occurs when you create a multipage form or report with different vertical tabs on each page Table 6 10 Vertical tab channel commands Set vertical tabs at n1 n2 etc ESC b CHR n0 CHR n1 as channel n0 CHR n2 CHR 0 Select vertical
42. d This can be used to re 74 mind an operator to change the paper or to make another adjust ment to the printer You can try this by typing LPRINT CHRS 7 E Resetting the printer Up to now when we wanted to reset the printer to the power on condition we have had to either turn the printer off and then on again or to send the specific codes that reset the particular features There is an easier way The control code ESC will reset all of the printer s features to the power on condition as determined by the DIP switches with one exception This exception is that ESC will not erase any characters that you have stored in the printer s RAM memory In addition if you set the Panel modes by the control panel settings at the power on these functions will be remain with this control code Putting your printer to sleep You know how to put your printer off line with the On Line key on the control panel Your printer has another off line state that can be controlled from your computer When you turn the printer off line from your computer this printer will ignore anything that you send it except for the code to go on line again CHR 19 is the code to turn your printer off line CHR 17 turns your printer to on line status E Printing the bottom of the sheet Sometimes when you are using individual sheets of paper you may want to print near the bottom of a sheet The paper out detector usually sto
43. ded I spaces 50 NEXT I 60 LPRINT CHRS 27 CHRS O 70 LPRINT This line is Normal space 80 END This line is added 5 spaces This line is added 4 spaces This line is added 3 spaces This line is added 2 spaces This line is added 1 spaces This line is Normal space 78 This command can be used to produce micro justification which is a method of justifying lines by increasing the space be tween each character E Repeat characters This printer has a command that automatically repeats characters for you Try this program to see how it works 10 Demo of character repeat 20 LPRINT CHRS 27 V CHRS 4 30 LPRINT This line shows Repeat characters 40 LPRINT CHR 27 V CHRS 0 50 LPRINT And this is not 60 END In this program line 20 selects the 4 times repeat with ESC V CHR 4 command And line 30 sets the characters for repeating Then line 40 terminates this command with ESC gt V CHR 0 The results from this program look like this This line shows Repeat characters This line shows Repeat characters This line shows Repeat characters This line shows Repeat characters And this is not Uni directional printing Uni directional printing is a big word that means printing in one direction only Your printer normally prints when the print head is moving in both directions But once in a while you may have an application where you are more concerned about how the vertical
44. des in the file They know that they won t print anything and so they protect you by not letting you use them But the non printing codes are the ones that you need to use your printer s features So EasyWriter provides a way to override this protec tion If you precede a special code with a control O then EasyWriter will accept the next non printing code Let s look at a specific example Suppose you want to print the title of a book in boldface The code sequence to select boldface print is Escape G that s two separate characters Entering the G is no problem it s a printing character so EasyWriter won t object although in this case it s not going to print The Escape however is a non printing character so it re quires special handling To enter the Escape code first enter con trol O hold the Ctrl key while you press the letter O Then press the Esc key The Escape character shows on the screen as a left pointing arrow Now just type the letter G and you re done When you want to end the boldface print you need to enter Escape H Use the same procedure enter control O Esc and then H You can use many of your printer s features this way Find the codes that you need in Appendix C A note to WordStar users WordStar is probably the most popular word processing program in the world But it provides no way to enter special printer control codes from the keyboard WordStar does however provide
45. ding sprocket feed paper Adjusting the print head Extra functions with the control panel Self tests Hex dump Panel modes Setting print start position Setting the top of form Setting the left and right margins Connecting the printer Chapter 3 Using Commercial Software 27 First some terminology Using your printer with SuperCalc Using your printer with word processors Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Controlling with BASIC 33 Some basics about BASIC First steps Establishing communications The CHR function Control codes The escape codes A note on command syntax Some problem codes Printing Text 39 Some special kinds of text Letter Quality characters Characters in the Font Cartridge Underlines and overlines Boldface printing Superscripts and subscripts Changing the print pitch Expanded print Condensed print Proportional printing Mixing print modes Formatting Text 53 Lines and line spacing Starting a new line Changing the line spacing Moving down the page without a carriage return Page control Form feed Changing the page length Bottom margin Setting left and right margins Horizontal and vertical tabs Horizontal tabs One time horizontal tabs Vertical tabs Vertical tab channels Chapter 7 Special Features of the Printer 73 Now hear this Resetting the printer Putting your printer to sleep Printing the bottom of the sheet Backspace delete and cancel text Immediate print Adjustin
46. e and they are moved down just slightly the second time they are printed Now that s pretty nice printing isn t it E Superscripts and subscripts Your printer can print in two different heights of characters The smaller characters are called superscripts and subscripts and are half the height of normal characters Superscripts print even with the tops of regular printing while subscripts print even with the bottom of regular printing They are frequently used to reference footnotes and in mathematical formulas Table 5 5 has the codes for using superscripts and subscripts 44 Table 5 5 Superscripts and subscripts commands Function ESC S 0 ESC S 1 Super and subscript OFF ESC T Try this program to see them work 10 Demo of superscripts and subscripts 20 LPRINT Look 30 LPRINT CHRS 27 S0 40 LPRINT SUPERSCRIPTS 50 LPRINT CHRS 27 T 60 LPRINT amp 70 LPRINT CHRS 27 S1 80 LPRINT SUBSCRIPTS 90 LPRINT CHRS 27 T 100 LPRINT on one line Look SUPERSCRIPTS amp sugsscripts on one line Here line 30 turns on superscripts with ESC S 0 It s turn ed off in line 50 with ESC T Then between printing text subscripts are turned on in line 70 with ESC S 1 and finally off in line 90 Again everything prints on one line because of the semicolons CHANGING THE PRINT PITCH In printer talk the number of characters that can be printed
47. e basic arithmetic Each vertical column which has a max imum of 24 dots is first divided into three groups of eight dots Each group of eight dots is represented by one byte which con sists of eight bits That s where the numbers down the left side of the grid come in Notice that there is a number for each row of dots and that each number is twice the number below it By making these numbers powers of two we can take any combina tion of dots in a vertical column and assign them a unique value Some examples will make this clearer As shown in Figure 8 6 if we add the numbers for the dots that print in a column the sum will be a number in the range of 0 to 255 Each number from 0 255 represents a unique combination of dots 128 e 128 64 o 64 o 64 32 o 32 o 32 32 16 o 16 o 16 8 e 8 e 8 4 o 4 o 4 2 eo 2 eo 2 eo 2 1 i 1 Sum 103 58 255 Figure 8 6 By adding the values of each dot in a column you ll get a unique description for any combination of dots So add up the values of the dots in each cloumn using this system In Figure 8 7 we ve shown our grid with the sums of the columns filled in across the bottom see if these agree with your answers Across the top of the grid you ve probably noticed the cryptic labeling of each column d1 d2 d3 etc These labels correspond to the labels in the command syntax stateme
48. e it send for your printer to print This is all you 28 need to know to use your printer as a regular printer But this printer isn t just a regular printer Your printer has many capabilities that your commercial software isn t aware of A lit tle later we will see what it takes to use some of your printer s advanced features with commercial software E First some terminology Your printer knows what to print because it knows how to in terpret the codes that the computer sends to it These codes are numbers that the computer sends to your printer Both the com puter and the printer know the meaning of these codes because they are a set of standard codes used by almost all microcom puters This set of codes is the American Standard Code for Infor mation Interchange which is usually referred to as ASCII pro nounced ask key There are ASCII codes for all the letters of the alphabet both lower case and capital the numbers from 0 to 9 most punctuation marks and some but not all of the printer s functions ASCII codes are referred to in several different ways de pending on the way they are used Sometimes these codes are treated as regular numbers For example the letter A is represented by the number 65 in ASCII Appendix B shows all of the ASCII codes In BASIC ASCII codes are used in the CHR function This function is used to print the character that is represented by the number in the CHR function The
49. e of text at a time only that line will be deleted The following program shows how these codes works N 10 Backspace delete and cancel line 20 LPRINT BACKSPACE DOES NOT 30 LPRINT CHRS 8 CHRS 8 CHRS 8 40 LPRINT WORK 50 LPRINT DELETE DOES NOT 60 LPRINT CHRS 127 CHRS 127 CHRS 127 70 LPRINT WORK 80 LPRINT CANCEL LINE pcs ss Ee eg ee ge ee ONAN Ong A E do NG BOE e de ds e ad oi E a e dd Rg Se eee ge ge ds Oe ee Te ee ee E aes 76 90 LPRINT CHR 24 100 LPRINT DOES NOT WORK Here is what this program will print BACKSPACE DOES N F WORK DELETE DOES WORK DOES NOT WORK The backspace codes in line 30 move the printhead a total of three spaces to the left so that the first part of line 40 will over print the word NOT The delete codes in line 60 erase the three letters in the word NOT so that it doesn t even print In line 90 CHR 24 deletes the words in line 80 The semicolon at the end of line 80 prevents a line feed from causing that line to print before the printer receives the CHR 24 code The text in line 100 prints as it normally would because it is after CHR 24 E Immediate print This printer can print at fine rate of 250 characters per sec ond But it will also print more slowly at the speed of your typ ing In immedtate print mode the printhead prints one character at a time as you send it This printer als
50. e the print head right from the current position The formula for calculating how much the print head moves is the same as in the absolute horizontal tab command However the units by which the print head actually moves vary with the print style you are using Table 6 8 shows the various options 67 Table 6 8 Units of motion for the relative horizontal tab command Draft characters LQ characters Try this program to see how this works 10 Demo of relative horizontal tabs 20 LPRINT CHRS 27 x0 30 LPRINT Draft characters 40 GOSUB 120 50 LPRINT CHRS 27 x1 60 LPRINT LQ characters 70 GOSUB 120 80 LPRINT CHRS 27 p1 90 LPRINT LQ proportional 100 GOSUB 120 110 END 120 LPRINT Relative 130 LPRINT CHRS 27 MW CHRS 40 CHRS 0 140 LPRINT Horizontal 150 LPRINT CHRS 27 CHRS 20 CHRS 0 160 LPRINT Tab 170 LPRINT 180 RETURN Draft characters Relative Horizontal Tab LQ characters Relative Horizontal Tab LQ proportional Relative Horizontal Tab Vertical tabs Vertical tabs have the same kinds of uses that horizontal tabs do they just work in the other direction Horizontal tabs allow you to reach a specific column on the page no matter where you start from Vertical tabs are the same If you have a vertical tab 68 set at line 20 a vertical tab or lt VT gt will move you to line 20 whether you start from line 5 or line 19 The vertical tab is n
51. ease the paper completely to adjust it The paper bail holds the paper against the platen according to the setting of the release lever The bail is opened when the release lever is in the top position closed when the lever is in the second or third positions and opened by the printer when the lever is in the bottom position Release lever Paper bail Figure 2 3 Use friction feed for single sheets and tractor feed for continuous paper 14 E Loading single sheets Now instead of feeding the paper in manually by turning the platen knob we re going to use the release lever for automatic feeding the printer must be turned on Single sheets from 5 5 to 14 5 inches wide can be used OK Let s start 1 Move the sprockets and sheet guides on the tractor feed unit all the way to the ends 2 With the ribs of the paper guide toward you and the sliding adjuster at the bottom left insert the guide into the slot at the back of the printer cover 3 Insert the guide stand in the notches provided for it and use it to prop up the paper guide 4 Position the adjuster at the triangle marked on the guide for standard margins or set it according to your re quirements 5 Set the release lever for single sheets the second posi tion from the top Figure 2 4 Raise the paper guide for loading single sheets Figure 2 5 Prop up the paper guide by inserting the guide st
52. ector to which you attach your com puter cable 11 SLOTS FOR FONT CARTRIDGES These are the two openings at the bottom right of the front of the printer Insert ing an optional font cartridge pushes the small door up out of the way and exposes a connector which accepts the cartridge Controls and indicators Now let s go over the controls and indicators of the printer starting with the control panel on the right There are seven in dicators and five keys on the control panel 2 paa Ez AE Y E MODE FORM LENGTH PROP L 136 DT PRINT PAPER 163 P PITCH TOF FEED ON LINE 2221 Figure 2 2 The control panel POWER INDICATOR Glows green when the power is on PE INDICATOR Stands for Paper Empty and glows red when the printer runs out of paper and when certain printer malfunctions occur FORM LENGTH SWITCH Tells the printer how long the pages are so that it can generate an automatic TOF code at the appropriate time TYPE STYLE INDICATORS Shows the character set in use standard STD font 1 F1 or font 2 F2 TYPE STYLE KEY Selects one of the three character sets available to the printer MODE INDICATORS Either DRAFT or LQ glows green to indicate the mode set by the Mode key or the DIP switch MODE KEY Changes the print mode every time it is press ed PITCH INDICATORS Shows the character pitch current ly set Proportional PROP 136 1
53. een wires of the printhead and the descenders such as the lower case p shown use the bottom eighteen pins As the printhead moves across the page in either direction that s what is meant by bi directional printing it prints one column of dots at a time Each time a dot is supposed to print an electromagnet inside the printhead causes the appropriate wire to strike the ribbon making this printer an impact printer O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O E oh AA As o Figure 8 1 As the printhead moves across the page each of the wires prints one row of dots THE PRINT MATRIX All of the standard characters that this printer prints are form ed from patterns of dots that are permanently stored in the printer s ROM read only memory This includes all of the standard ASCII characters and special characters the interna tional character sets and the LQ characters 91 But there is another area of memory in this printer reserved for user defined characters These are characters that you can design and download into the printer When download characters are defined they are stored in RAM random access memory which allows you to define or modify them at any time Each of these draft characters whether it is from the standard ROM or in download RAM is constructed on a grid which is five boxes by twenty four boxes high In addition a dot can straddle any of t
54. g the width of space between characters Repeat characters Uni directional printing The seven bit dilemma Block graphics characters and special symbols International character sets Printing BIG characters The optional sheet feeder Reading a hex dump Chapter 8 Creating Your Own Characters 89 Dot matrix printing The print matrix Defining your own characters Rule 1 Dots cannot overlap Rule 2 Each row is divided into three bytes Assigning a value of character space Assigning a value to your character Download character definition command Printing download characters How to print the characters in control code area The print mode and the download characters Draft download characters Letter quality download characters Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C Appendix D Appendix E Appendix F Dot Graphics 107 Comparing dot graphics with download characters E Using the dot graphics command Specifying the number of columns of dots Specifying the graphics data Combining text and graphics Printing a design or logo Plotting with your printer How the program works Using the 24 pin graphics mode Compatibility with existing software Redefining alternate graphics codes Caring for Your Printer 127 Cleaning the printer Replacing the ribbon _ Replacing the print head DIP Switch Settings 133 Switch functions ASCII Codes and Conversion 139 Chart Function Codes 147 Commands to control pr
55. he vertical lines As an example take a look at the enlarged 9 superimposed on the grid in Figure 8 2 As you can see some dots are inside the boxes and some are centered on the vertical lines This in effect makes the character grid 9 dots wide by 24 dots high Los A Figure 8 2 Dots can be inside boxes or straddle the vertical lines of the grid DEFINING YOUR OWN CHARACTERS You ve seen how these characters are designed by using a grid to layout the dots Now you can define characters exactly 92 the same way Make up some grids photocopy Figure 8 3 if you wish and get ready to be creative Just in case you are not feel ing creative and to make our explanations a little clearer we ll be using a picture of an automobile as an example of a draft download character You can see how we ve laid it out in Figure 8 4 Later in this chapter we ll use this character to create a small graph 1st byte ASCII code Left space ena Right space byte Data Ist 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 3rd lt byte Liste Figure 8 3 Use this grid or one similar to it to define your own draft characters You ll notice that Figure 8 3 includes a lot of information around the grid Don t be intimidated we ll explain each item as we come to it in our discussion of defining and actually printing download characters E Rule 1 Dots cannot overlap As you can
56. his 40 Form feed 50 LPRINT CHRS 12 Before you run the program turn your printer off and adjust the paper so that the top of the sheet is even with the top of the ribbon guide on the print head then turn the printer back on If you don t remember how to do this review Chapter 2 When you run the program the results will look like this 99 f LINE NUMBER 2 O i LINE NUMBER 3 O O LINE NUMBER 4 O The form feed CHR 12 in line 50 caused the printer to move to the top of a new page before printing the last two lines E Changing the page length You may have some computer forms that you wish to use with this printer that are not 11 inches high That s no problem because you can tell your printer how high the forms are that you are using There are two commands for doing this shown in this table Table 6 3 Form length control CHR 12 Set the page length to n lines ESC C CHR x Set the page length to n inches ESC C CHR 0 CHR m Let s set up a 7 inch high form length which is typical of many computer checks The following program will do it 10 Demo of variable form lengths 20 LPRINT CHRS 27 C CHRS 0 CHRS 7 30 LPRINT PAY TO THE ORDER OF 40 LPRINT CHRS 12 50 LPRINT PAY TO THE ORDER OF 60 END 60 This program should print PAY TO THE ORDER OF twice and they should be 7 inches apart Line
57. icro feed Reverse micro feed Top of form set Ak 7 so Rart TA PROP 1 136 Bd PRINT PAPER MOPE 163 Poy PITCH TOF FEED ON LINE 217 TYPE Fdo STYLE ri zk 22 Hold down L ae margin set Left margin set Press Figure 2 13 You can set many functions by the combinations of the control panel keys while in the Off Line mode E Setting print start position When you want to align the print start position you can set it by the micro feed operation with the control panel instead of turning the platen knob manually 1 Set the Off Line mode by pressing the On Line key 2 While holding down the On Line key press one of the following keys Paper Feed key Forward micro feed TOF key Reverse micro feed 3 When you can set the print start position release the Paper Feed key or the TOF key first then release the On Line key E Setting the top of form When you turn on the printer the top of form is automatically set to the current position If you want to change the position 24 you can reset it by the following procedures 1 Set the Off Line mode by pressing the On Line key 2 While holding the Print Pitch key press the TOF key Your printer acknowledges the new top of form with the sound of beep E Setting the left and right margins As you ll learn in Chapter 5 you can set the left and right margins with the control codes In addi
58. in one inch is called the print pitch or character pitch Normally your printer is set for 10 characters per inch which is called pica and is the same as the pica pitch on some typewriters This works out to 136 characters per line You can also print 12 characters per inch elite pitch This gives you 163 characters per line You can set these pitches by using the Mode key on the con trol panel manually or by software as shown in the table below 45 Table 5 6 Print pitch commands Characters inch ESC P 12 ESC M Try this program to see how these two pitches work 10 Demo of pica and elite pitches 20 LPRINT CHRS 27 M 30 LPRINT This line is ELITE pitch 40 LPRINT CHRS 27 P 50 LPRINT This line is PICA pitch normal When you run this program you should get this This line is ELITE pitch This line is PICA pitch normal Line 20 turns on elite pitch with ESC M Line 30 prints a Ne line at 12 characters per inch The ESC P in line 40 resets the printer to pica pitch and line 50 prints a line in pica pitch MW Expanded print Each of the print pitches can be enlarged to twice its normal width This is called expanded print Try this program to see how it works 10 Demo of expanded print 20 LPRINT Demonstration of 30 LPRINT CHRS 14 40 LPRINT EXPANDED 50 LPRINT CHRS 20 60 LPRINT printing 70 LPRINT Notice that 80 LPRINT CH
59. int style Font style controls Font pitch controls Special print modes Controlling the vertical print position Line feed controls Form feed and related commands Bottom margins and vertical tabs Controlling the horizontal print position Download character commands Dot graphics commands Other commands Command Summary in Numeric 191 Order Technical Specifications 195 The Parallel Interface 199 Functions of the Connector Signals Appendix G Appendix H Serial Interface Specifications 203 Configuring the serial interface The serial protocols Serial busy protocols XON XOFF protocol ACK protocol Connecting with Computer 209 Connecting with IBM PC and Compaq BASIC programming Listing programs Connecting with Apple II computers Applesoft BASIC Listing programs Connecting with TRS 80 computers TRS 80 BASIC Listing programs Connecting with Kaypro Osborne and other CP M computers Using MBASIC Listing programs CHAPTER 1 SETTING UP YOUR PRINTER Subjects we ll cover in Chapter 1 include e Choosing a suitable place for your printer e Unpacking your new printer e Setting it up IS RRA AA anh ed ae at WHERE SHALL WE PUT IT Before you do anything else give some thought to where you ll be using your printer Obviously it will be somewhere near your computer And both printer and computer will lead longer healthier lives if they like their surroundings For in stance we recommend
60. is an ampersand amp CHR 38 followed by a CHR 0 nl and n2 are used to specify the ASCII values of the characters you are defining The reason that there are two bytes reserved for this is that your printer allows you to define many characters with just a single command n1 is used to specify the beginning of a range of characters to be defined n2 specifies the end of the range For instance if you wanted to change the ap pearance of the numerals from 0 to 9 which have ASCII codes 48 through 57 the command would begin with ESC amp CHR 0 CHR 48 CHR 57 Of course you can also define individual characters by making n1 and n2 equal The three bytes following the specification of the range of characters m0 m1 and m2 are used to specify the width of the character and the space to be allowed on either side of it The left space in dot column is specified by m0 and the right space is specified by m2 The second byte m1 specifies the number of columns of dots that will be printed by the character By vary ing the width of the character itself and the spaces around it you can actually create proportional width characters F 98 You ll probably recognize di d2 dx from the top of our layout grid That s right each column is described by three bytes Now we ve got everything we need to download one character to the printer The complete command for our car character is shown below CHRS 27 C
61. itches character weights and font selections you can create nearly any effect you want to in text And with international character sets and the special text and big characters described in Chapter 7 you can print almost any character you think of But if almost any character isn t good enough for you then it s a good idea you have this printer With it you can actually create your own characters As you ll see in this chapter download characters can be used to print a logo special characters for foreign languages scientific and professional ap plications or any other specific printing task DOT MATRIX PRINTING In order to create download characters you ll need some understanding of how dot matrix printers work The process is called dot matrix printing because each character is composed of small dots arranged on a matrix or grid To see how that character grid gets printed you need to take a look at the print head itself The printhead in this printer contains 24 wires apparently ar ranged in a vertical column If you were to remove the print head and look at the wires you would see two staggered col umns of twelve wires However the timing is such that they print as one continuous column of 24 wires 90 Figure 8 1 shows an enlarged schematic view of the front of the printhead showing the ends of the wires and their relation ship to the draft characters As you can see the capital letters use the top eight
62. knob with the power on could damage the drive gears RELEASE LEVER The release lever is on top of the printer near the left rear corner You ll be using it often it controls how strongly the paper is held against the platen The release lever has four positions the top setting is used for insert ing paper the next is for single sheets the third is for sprocket feed paper and the bottom one is used when adjusting the paper PAPER BAIL The bail is the movable bar that holds the paper against the platen Its position depends on the setting of the release lever DIP SWITCHES There are two sets of eight switches that are used in interfacing the printer to your particular computer There are also switches to set page length line spacing and per 13 foration skipping See Appendix A for a complete list and ex planation SELECTING AND LOADING PAPER Your printer can handle the two basic types of paper single sheets stationery envelopes multipart business forms etc and continuous paper fan fold perforated paper This is a good place to tell you about the release lever which you ll be using often This lever controls the pressure of the paper against the platen It has four settings 3 The top setting is used when you want to load paper in the printer b The second setting is for normal single sheets hh The third is for sprocket feed paper Y The bottom one is used when you want to rel
63. lines align than with how fast it prints This printer lets you make this choice The table below shows the commands for controlling how this printer prints Table 7 3 Printing direction commands Control code ESC U 1 Print in both directions ESC U 0 ESC lt 79 Try this program to see the difference that printing in one direction makes 10 20 Uni directional printing LPRINT CHRS 27 A CHRS 6 30 LPRINT CHRS 27 2 40 FOR I 1 TO 10 50 LPRINT i 60 NEXT I 70 LPRINT LPRINT 80 LPRINT CHR 27 U1 90 FOR I 1 TO 10 100 LPRINT i 110 NEXT 1 120 LPRINT CHRS 12 CHRS 27 0 Here is what you will get The top line is printed bi directional ly and the bottom is printed uni directionally You will have to look hard because there isn t much difference m a re es E CTO E ea es A ee eee eres ee ee ee e a Let s analyze the program Line 20 defines the line spacing to 6 60 of an inch so that the characters that we print will touch top to bottom and line 30 activates the definition Lines 40 60 print 10 vertical line characters Then line 80 sets one direction printing and the vertical lines are printed again Finally line 120 sends a form feed to advance the paper to the top of a new page and then uses the master reset to restore the printer to the 80 power on condition You can also set the printer to print in one direction for one line only by using the ESC
64. ly need to do it once It doesn t make much sense to set up a tab to use only one time There must be an easier way and of course there is The solution is called a one time tab Table 6 7 show the three commands FEI ST PRET ANENE A A EE EIRENE PSR TT EOD TT CS ee II A RE ee A Re ee we eee 66 Table 6 7 One time horzontal tabs One time horizontal tab of n spaces ESC f 0 CHR n Absolute horizontal tab ESC CHR n1 CHRS n2 Relative horizontal tab ESC N CHR n1 CHR n2 The first command in Table 6 7 moves the print head n col umns to the right It has the same effect as sending spaces to the printer The absolute horizontal tab command moves the print head to a specified position on the page The position that you want the print head to move to measured from the left margin is specified by the values of n1 and n2 in 1 60 inch units using the formula n1 n2 X 256 Try this program to see how this works 10 Demo of absolute horizontal tabs 20 FOR 1 60 TO 70 STEP 2 30 LPRINT 1 44 40 LPRINT CHRs 27 s CHRS 1 CHRS 0 50 LPRINT Horizontal tab 60 NEXT I 70 END In this program the print head is positioned before the H in Horizontal is printed 60 Horizontal tab 62 Horizontal tab 64 Horizontal tab 66 Horizontal tab 68 Horizontal tab 70 Horizontal tab The relative horizontal tab command can mov
65. n 40 LPRINT CHRS 12 Form feed 61 50 FOR I 1 TO 150 60 LPRINT THIS IS LINE I 70 NEXT I 90 LPRINT CHRS 12 Form feed 100 END When you run this program it will print 150 lines right down the page and across the perforations When it s done line 90 sends a form feed to advance to the top of the next page Look at the lines that have printed near the perforations Separate the sheets and see if any of the lines have been torn in half These are the problems that the bottom margin will solve Now add the following lines to your program Don t forget the semicolons or you won t get quite the same results that we did 20 Leave 6 blank lines at the bottom of page 30 LPRINT CHRS 27 N CHRS 6 80 LPRINT CHRS 27 0 Clear bottom margin Now when you run the program your printer skip the last six lines on each page Line 30 sets the bottom margin and line 80 clears bottom margin when we are done THIS IS LINE THIS IS LINE THIS IS LINE THIS IS LINE THIS IS LINE THIS LS LINE THIS IS LINE uae THIS TS THIS IS LINE 53 THIS IS LINE 54 THIS IS LINE 55 THIS IS LINE 56 THIS IS LINE 57 THIS IS LINE 58 3 o O THIS IS LINE 59 o o NDOUFWNH THIS IS LINE 60 l THIS IS LINE 61 THIS IS LINE 62 THIS IS LINE 63 THIS IS LINE 64 THIS IS LINE 65 THIS IS LINE 66 THIS IS THIS IS LINE 113 THIS IS LINE 114 l THIS IS LINE 115 THIS IS LINE 116
66. ne with proportional pitch Then line 40 resets the proportional printing and line 50 prints a line in normal pica pitch NOTE When you change the print pitch by the MODE key on the control panel this proportional spacing should be automatically cancelled MIXING PRINT MODES We have learned how to use the various print modes in dividually and together Now we ll see how to combine them more efficiently You have at your disposal a unique command that lets you choose any valid combination of print modes and pitch This is the Master Print mode command It looks like this ESC P n 50 Here the value of n defines the print style to be selected The value of n can range from 0 to 255 which is the range of values that can be stored in one eight bit byte If you look at each bit in this byte you ll find that each one represents a printing style variation Adding the binary values of the selected bits gives the value of n for a particular combination of print styles Table 5 10 shows the decimal values of the bits in the Master Print byte To calculate the value n for a particular combination of printing styles just add the values of the features that you want to combine Table 5 10 Values of mixing print styles for Master Print Print style Elite print 2 Proportional print POO DO 14 Notused 6 Expanded print 8 Z Not used A 8 Underline______ ____ 8_____ For example if you want to
67. nt 95 which we ll get to shortly 123456789 tst eae Ne r ASCII code 6D 2nd Left space 1 byte Right space 2 Data isti 1 240 and 6 8 3rd 8 1066 ath y ara 5th 24 99 128 byte 6th D TH 37 286 192 sth 0 sth 3 i Figure 8 7 Add the values of the dots in each column and write the sum of each column at the bottom Assigning a value of character space Besides being able to specify the actual width of the character this printer allows you to specify the position in the standard grid where the character will print You must specify the dot column in which the printed character starts and the dot column in which the character ends Why you may ask would you want to define a character this way instead of merely defin ing the overall width of the character Because this printer s draft proportional character definitions can also be used to print normal width characters which are twelve dot columns wide And by centering even the narrow characters in the complete grid they will look good even you aren t printing them propor tionally The three bytes are used to specify the width of the character and the space to be allowed on either side of it The left space in dot columns is specified by m0 and the right space is specified by m2 The second byte m1 specifies the number of columns of dots that will be printed by the character By
68. nter But how do you know that If you try printing those characters now you don t get a car and telephone Instead you get That s because the download characters are stored in a different part of the printer s memory To tell it to look in download character RAM instead of standard character ROM it requires another command ESC CHR n CHR 0 This command is used to select the download character set if n 49 or to select the standard character set if n 48 Let s try it out Enter this program 10 LPRINT CHRS 27 1 CHRS 0 20 LPRINT CHRS 60 CHRS 61 30 LPRINT CHR 27 20 CHRS 0 40 END Voila It should have printed out the two characters we defin ed Your printout should look like this qa If it doesn t check the last program we ran for errors then rerun it Let s find out if there are any other characters in the download RAM Try this program 10 LPRINT CHRS 27 1 CHRS 0 20 FOR I 32 TO 126 30 LPRINT CHRS I 40 NEXT 1 100 50 LPRINT 60 FOR I 160 TO 254 70 LPRINT CHRS 1 80 NEXT 1 90 LPRINT 100 LPRINT CHRS 27 30 CHRS 0 110 END Nope Just two characters in the download set This is inconve nient for a couple of reasons First every time you wanted to use a download character you would have to switch back and forth between character sets Knowing that you wouldn t want to do that your printer won t even allow it So we have made it an easy t
69. o moves the paper up so that you can see the current line and then down to continue printing You can turn immediate print mode on with ESC i 1 But before looking at it let s review the normal operation of the print buffer Enter this program 20 As INPUT TYPE A CHARACTER AS 30 IF A THEN 50 40 LPRINT AS GOTO 20 50 LPRINT LPRINT CHRS 27 0e Now type several characters and after each press the RETURN key True to form the printer just stuffs the characters into its buffer while it waits for a carriage return code In this program the RETURN key doesn t send a car 77 riage return code To end this program and print the contents of the buffer press RETURN alone Now add this line 10 LPRINT CHRS 27 i1 And RUN the program Your printer responds to your typing immediately When you are finished press RETURN alone Adjusting the width of space between characters This printer provides a command that adjusts the space be tween all the characters that it prints when the DIP switch 2 2 is set off The ESC CHR 32 CHR m command adds blank space between the characters The units of space that are added vary depending on the current print style as shown in Table 7 Za Table 7 2 Unit of adjusting space width Try this program to see how this works 10 Demo of adjusting spaces 20 FOR I 5 TO 1 STEP 1 30 LPRINT CHRS 27 CHRS I 40 LPRINT This line is ad
70. o the slot The parallel interface board that comes with your printer con tains all the electronics that your printer needs to talk to a com puter In addition there are two optional interface I F boards that you can order the serial interface board lets you connect to a serial RS 232C computer port the other board contains extra buffer memory for parallel output All three boards are installed the same way To install or change an I F board start by turning the printer around Notice the snap on cover at the left end Take it off and you ll see where the board goes Fit the I F board into the side slots and slide it all the way down don t force it by turning off the power switch If the board connector is seated snugly in its socket you should be able to put the cover back on and connect the cable from your computer you re ready to go E Installing the font cartridge This printer is mounted the Prestige characters as standard You can add two different character styles by installing the op tional font cartridges to the printer To install or change a font cartridge start by turing off the power switch Fit the font cartridge into the slots and slide it all the way Figure 1 9 Slide the font cartridge into front slot while the power switch off CHAPTER 2 GETTING TO KNOW YOUR PRINTER Subjects we ll cover in Chapter 2 include e Parts of the printer what they re for and how
71. offers character set 42 which is almost the same as character set 1 except for the addition of ASCII codes 36 21 and 128 159 Character set 2 is selected with ESC 6 to go back to character set 1 use ESC 7 Y ou can also specify the power on default character set by set ting DIP switch 1 5 on for character set 1 and off for character set 2 while the DIP switch 2 2 is set on The following program will print out all of the graphics characters available 81 10 LPRINT CHR 27 0 20 LPRINT CHRS 27 6 30 FOR J 3 TO 6 40 LPRINT J CHRS J CHRS 9 50 NEXT J 60 LPRINT 21 CHRS 21 70 LPRINT 80 FOR J 128 TO 254 STEP 5 90 FOR I J TO J 4 95 IF 1 gt 254 THEN 110 100 LPRINT I CHRS I CHRS 9 110 NEXT I 120 LPRINT LPRINT 130 NEXT J Figure 7 1 shows what this program will print If your chart doesn t look like this because it has regular letters and numbers instead of the special symbols then your computer is only using seven bits unless you have set DIP switches 2 2 and 2 5 off by mistake You can get the correct printout by changing line 100 to this 100 LPRINT I CHRS 27 gt CHRS 1 CHRS 27 CHRS 9 So how are all of these strange characters used Here is a short program that demonstrate how the graphics characters can be combined to create a figure the 5 of clubs 10 LPRINT CHRS 27 6 20 LPRINT CHRS 218 CHRS 196 CHRS 196 CHR 196 CHRS 196 CHRS 196
72. ok like this XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXMXXXXXXXXXXXAXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXKXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXX XXX XXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX When you want to reset the margins to the default values you have two choices You can either turn the printer off and back 64 on or you can set margin values equal to the default values This means that you should set a left margin of 0 and right margin of 136 in pica pitch If you change the pitch of your printing after you set your margins the margins will not change They stay at the same place on the page So if you set the margins to give you 65 col umns of printing when you are using pica type then you change to elite type you will have room for more than 65 columns of elite printing between the margins HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL TABS Suppose you need to move across the page to a certain posi tion several times in a document It s not much fun to type in space after space And you don t have to you can tab your way across the page Your printer s tabs are like those on a typewriter but much more powerful You have both horizontal and vertical tabs which can be used for both text and graphics and they re real ly handy for indenting paragraphs and making tables M Horizontal tabs Horizontal tabs are set automatically every eight positions To move the print head to the next tab position send CHR 9 Try this program
73. open the printer as a numbered device then to direct output to that device For example you might type the following to print Hello or to list a program in the C 64 s memory OPEN4 4 OPEN4 4 CMD4 CMD4 LIST PRINT Hello CLOSE4 CLOSE4 Here the first line says that the printer is device number 4 the second directs output to it the third does the printing and the last line closes down device number 4 Appendix H gives more information about listing programs on the various computers Find the part that applies to your com puter and try it Now that we all know how our computers address the printer let s try listing a BASIC program Load a BASIC program and LLIST it or however your computer does it We ve crossed the first major hurdle learning how to list programs on your printer Now we are ready to jump into the world of programm ing with your printer But first there are a few fundamentals that we need to cover E Establishing communications We ve learned something about communicating with our printer Now we need to adapt what we know to printing in a ER RER REE ag ST 2 35 BASIC program Generally computers use about the same pro cedure for printing in a program as they do to list a program Let s try what we learned Type the following NEW 10 LPRINT TESTING RUN Remember we use LPRINT you may have to use something else At any rate you should have the word TESTING on
74. ot set at the power on default If you send a CHR 11 which is the ASCII code for lt VT gt before we have set up tabs advance the paper one line Enter this program to see how this works 10 Demo of vertical tabs 40 LPRINT CHRS 11 FIRST TAB 50 LPRINT CHRS 11 SECOND TAB 60 LPRINT CHRS 11 THIRD TAB 70 LPRINT CHRS 11 FOURTH TAB Now let s set some vertical tabs of our own Add these lines to the program 20 LPRINT CHRS 27 B CHRS 10 CHRS 15 30 LPRINT CHRS 25 CHRS 30 CHRS 0 ESC gt B is the command to set vertical tabs Like the horizontal tab setting command tab positions must be defined in ascending order Our example sets vertical tabs at lines 10 15 25 and 30 Then the CHR 11 in each of the following lines advances the paper to the next vertical tab The printout is shown below FIRST TAB SECOND TAB THIRD TAB FOURTH TAB 69 Add one more line to the program to demonstrate one more feature of vertical tabs 80 LPRINT CHRS 11 FIFTH TAB Now when you run the program the first page looks just like before but line 80 sends one more lt VT gt than there are tabs This doesn t confuse your printer it advances the paper to the next tab position which happens to be the first tab position on the next page That s nice isn t it There s a one time vertical tab command that works just like the one time horizontal tab command Try this program how these
75. pandable buffer e An entire range of character sets for printing in eleven languages e Choice of various typestyles e Easy front panel operation e Automatic paper feed And best of all your new printer is compatible with the most popular personal computers and software packages so no mat ter how sophisticated your applications become it will continue to meet your needs These are just a few of the reasons you chose a product by Star Micronics one of the most respected names in dot matrix printers We want you to get the most from your printer with the least effort on your part so please take a few minutes to read this easy to understand guide You ll find that it will help you produce crisp clean documents in the shortest time possi ble You will also find that this printer is remarkably simple to set up and operate and that it s virtually maintenance free Enjoy your new Star Micronics printer Table of Contents Chapter 1 Setting Up Your Printer 1 Where shall we put it What have we here Removing the printer cover Removing the packing tube Removing shipping screws Installing the platen knob Installing the ribbon cartridge Installing the mute cover Installing the interface board Installing the font cartridge Chapter 2 Getting to Know Your Printer 9 Controls and parts of the printer Parts of the printer Controls and indicators Extra functions Other controls Selecting and loading paper Loading single sheets Loa
76. pro Corporation Microsoft BASIC Microsoft Corporation Osborne 1 Osborne Computer Corporation WordStar MicroPro International Corporation TRS 80 Radio Shack a division of Tandy Corporation SuperCalc Sorcim Corporation NOTICE 0 All rights reserved Reproduction of any part of this manual in any form what soever without STAR S express permission is forbidden e The contents of this manual are subject to change without notice All efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy of the contents of this manual at the time of going to press However should any errors be detected STAR would be greatly appreciate being informed of them one above notwithstanding STAR can assume no responsibility for any errors in this manual Copyright 1986 Star Micronics Co Ltd A Special Message to the New Owner Congratulations for choosing this printer one of the finest available at any price Your new printer will reward you with many years of high quality document printing and is backed by Star Micronics more than 30 years in manufacturing precision parts You already know that it represents the state of the art in tack sharp dot matrix printing with its rugged 24 pin print head Its bidirectional logic seeking operation gives you Letter Quali ty hardcopy at 100 characters per second and draft quality print at speeds of up to 300 characters per second Its many features include e High resolution graphics e Built in ex
77. ps the printer when you are about 1 inch from the bottom of the sheet This is notify you if you are run ning out of continuous paper Your printer has the ability to print right to the bottom of the sheet You can disable the paper out detector so that it doesn t stop the printer This will allow you to print to the end of the sheet and even beyond if you are not careful The codes to con trol the paper out detector along with the other codes that we have just learned are in the following table 75 Table 7 1 Some miscellaneous commands Control code CHRS 7 ESC HR 19 HR 17 ESC 8 ESC 9 HR 8 HR 127 HR 24 ESC i 1 ESC i 0 ESC CHR 32 CHR ESC V CHR n Repeat characters CHR m1 CHR mx ESC V CHR 0 E Backspace delete and cancel text Backspace CHR 8 backs up the printhead so that you can print two characters right on top of each other Each time your printer receives a backspace it moves the printhead one character to the left instead of to the right You can strike over multiple letters by sending more than one backspace code Delete CHR 127 also backs up one character but then it erases the previous character it s erased from your printer s buffer not from the paper Cancel text CHR 24 deletes all the text in the print buffer that is in the line before the delete text command Since your printer prints one lin
78. r 5 showed us all the basic techniques of using the printer Now we re ready for the more advanced ones We ll con centrate on changing the appearance of the page to suit our needs LINES AND LINE SPACING Starting a new line Up until now the only time we have thought about printing on a new line is when we didn t want it to happen We learned that putting a semicolon at the end of a BASIC line will not end the line of printing So somehow the computer telling the printer when to end one line and start another There are two codes that are used to end one line and start another They are carriage return CHR 13 and line feed CHR 10 Like the escape code they have been given ab breviations which you ll find many texts including this one lt CR gt and lt LF gt The codes are simple but their action is a little confusing especially with BASIC Carriage return is the easiest Each time that the printer receives a CHR 13 it returns the print head to the left margin It does not advance the paper if DIP switch 2 6 is on see below Line feed is more complicated Each time the printer receives a CHR 10 it both advances the paper one line and returns the 94 print head to the left margin ready to start a new line Now to add a little confusion most but not all versions of BASIC add a line feed CHR 10 to every carriage return CHR 13 that they send If your version of BASIC doesn t do this then
79. r s advanced features It may help however if we look at a couple of examples USING YOUR PRINTER WITH SUPERCALC SuperCalc is typical of the many spreadsheet programs that 30 are now available It has the capability of using several of the ad vanced features of your printer Perhaps the most often used feature with spreadsheet programs is compressed printing Let s see how to use compressed printing with SuperCalc In SuperCalc the Output command provides out put to the printer One of the options of the Output command is S etup This option provides you with a menu of functions to configure SuperCalc to match your printer You can change the number of characters that SuperCalc will print on a line and the number of lines that will print on a page You should be sure that these values match your printer Your printer can print 136 characters per line of pica type or 234 characters per line of con densed elite type One of the other options on this menu is send setup codes to printer This is how we tell this printer that we want to use condensed print The code to switch this printer in to condensed print is ASCII 15 or control O So to switch on condensed type use the Output command and after selecting D isplay and entering the range to print select the S etup op tion and the S etup Manual setup codes sub option Then at the prompt that says Enter codes CR when done type con trol O Remember
80. rds you will widen the gap pushing it away from you will narrow the gap There are four positions you can feel the lever clicking into the various notches The first step shown is the one most com monly used for single sheets of paper 19 Figure 2 10 The adjustment lever allows for different thicknesses of paper You shouldn t have any trouble finding the right gap setting for your paper If necessary experiment you ll soon find the best position for the paper you re using EXTRA FUNCTIONS WITH THE CONTROL PANEL There are many functions that are not directly specified on the control panel In this section we ll show you these extra functions While turning on the power Hex dump Self test 1 Self test 2 paarT E Prop To _ TYPE wo PRINT PAPER be STYLE 6s PITCH TOF FEED ON LINE LO aad 2217 T Print quality amp Print pitch panel mode T Type style amp Print quality panel mode 9 pin graphics mode Type style panel mode Print quality panel mode Print pitch panel mode Type style amp Print pitch Panel mode Figure 2 11 Extra functions white turning on the printer 20 Ss Oe ee gam en ee Self test 1 DIP switch 2 2 ON veros HORE 0123456789 lt gt R8ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ NM E IO UnA IE AN arate PAM a PRI TACA Ro AIM CDS sd UE TI A E EIA URETA Ro
81. ry ESC allows us to escape from the ordinary set of control codes so we can specify additional functions and other informa tion needed for a printer function In this manual we ll write the ESC code inside broken brackets like this ESC lt ESC decimal 27 is always followed by at least one other number it is never used alone The whole series of related numbers is called an escape sequence A note on command syntax Because the readers of this manual will be running such a wide variety of applications on so many different computers we just can t show the exact way of sending codes to the printer for each one of them Instead as we introduce you to each new com mand we will show the commands as in this example ESC W 1 This command that turns on expanded printing ESC as we mentioned earlier is the escape code which is ASCII code 27 A letter or number in quotes such as the W above means that the character should be sent to the printer without the quotes In our example you should send a capital W following the escape code In BASIC you could do this in a couple of ways by sending the character itself e g LPRINT W or by using the CHR function to send the ASCII code for the character e g LPRINT CHR 87 Many of printer commands end with a 1 or 0 When shown as in the above example i e no quotes and no CHR you can use either ASCII code 1 i e CHR 1 or
82. s line shows standard print In this program line 20 selects LQ characters with ESC x 1 command Line 30 prints a sample before line 40 switches printer back to draft printing with an ESC x 0 When you run the program you should get this This line shows LETTER QUALITY This line shows standard print Table 5 1 Letter quality commands Letter quality ON ESC x 1 Letter quality OFF ESC x 0 EN Characters in the Font Cartridge This printer offers you the Prestige LQ characters as stand ard If you want to use other LQ character styles use the op tional font cartridges You can install those font cartridges following the procedures described in Chapter 1 You can control the characters in those font cartridges as shown below 10 Demo of optional characters 20 LPRINT CHRS 27 x1 30 LPRINT CHRS 27 k CHRS 1 40 LPRINT This line shows Font 1 characters 50 LPRINT CHRS 27 k CHRS 2 60 LPRINT This line shows Font 2 characters 70 LPRINT CHRS 27 k CHRS 0 80 LPRINT This line shows Internal Characters 90 END When you ve installed the Gothic Font Cartridge to the font slot 1 and the Italic Prestige Font Cartridge to the font slot 2 the results of this program look like this This line shows Font 1 characters This line shows Font 2 characters This line shows Internal Characters In this program line 30 selects the characters on the font slot 1 with ESC
83. see in Figure 8 4 our car has a nearly continuous outline But you may ask why not make it a really solid line and print all the intermediate dots as shown in Figure 8 5 Because the dots that straddle the vertical lines in the grid actually overlap those inside the boxes If we tried to print overlapping 93 123456789 1st byte ASCIt code 2nd Left space byte Right space Data Ist 2nd 3rd a E byte i i i 6th 7th 8th 9th Figure 8 4 We ve designed an automobile character 123456789 WRONG 128 64 32 Bae Ist 16 0000 byte 8 eRe 4 1009 2 1009 1 190 128 jee 64 ODO ASCII code 32 00 _ 2nd 16 ee Left space byte 8 ee Right space 4 OM 2 pee 1 be Data 128 DO oo 64 e aie 32 P da 3rd 16 Et byte 8 O 6th 4 am 7th 2 8th 1 Sth tl Figure 8 5 Dots cannot overlap those in immediately adjacent half columns will be ignored when the character is printed 94 dots the printhead would have to slow down and back up to print both dots not very efficient To avoid this inefficiency this printer will not allow you to define a character like Figure 8 5 Actually you can define it but when it prints your printer will leave out the overlapping dots so that it would print like Figure 8 4 E Rule 2 Each row is divided into three bytes Now it s time to give our creative side a break and get down to som
84. select elite expanded boldface print you would calculate the value of like this 13 Condensed print a da at Elite 1 Boldface 16 Expanded 32 n 49 The command would look like this CHR 27 CHR 49 To better understand the way the print modes work consider that each mode except pica pica is the default has a separate switch that can turned on and off via software Once the switch is on it stays on until turned off When two modes that conflict are turned on at the same time the printer must choose which one to use 91 For example suppose you turn on both Proportional and Con densed modes Since these cannot combine the printer must make a choice in this case the printer chooses Proportional Summary notes 1 Pica is the default pitch and is active when Elite is turned off 2 When two modes conflict the one of lesser priority is cancelled For example Proportional and Condensed can not be printed at the same time printing is Proportional 3 Underline and Expanded modes combine with any print modes 4 Proportional characters are always printed in Boldface MEMO N LO CHAPTER 6 FORMATTING TEXT Subjects we ll cover in Chapter 6 include e The carriage return and line feed e The amount of space between lines e Moving to the next page e The number of lines on a printed page e Horizontal and vertical tabs e Setting margins left right and bottom Chapte
85. the Federal Communications Commission helpful How to Identify and Resolve Radio TV Interference Problems This booklet is available from the U S Government Printing Office Washington D C 20402 Stock No 004 000 00345 4 For compliance with Federal Noise Interference Standard this equipment requires a shielded cable This statement will be applied only for the printers marketed in U S A Self Declaration Radio interferences regarding this equipment has been eliminated according to Vig 1046 1984 announced by the DBP DBP has been informed about the introduction of this special equipment and has been conceded the right to examine the whole series It is upon the responsibility of the user to assume that his own assembled system is in ac cordance with the technical regulations under Vfg 1046 1984 To observe FTZ regulations it is necessary to establish all connections to the printer with shielded cable The equipment may only be opened by qualified service representatives This statement will be applied only for the printers marketed in West Germany Trademark Acknowledgement NB 15 grafstar Star Micronics Co Ltd Apple Apple Il Apple 1 Apple Ie Applesoft Apple computer Inc Commodore C 64 Commodore Business Machines Inc Compaq Compaq Computer Corporation CP M Digital Research EasyWriter Information Unlimited Software Inc IBM Personal Computer IBM PC International Business Machines Corp Kaypro Kay
86. the character 1 which is ASCII code 49 The same idea applies to commands 37 ending with 0 So for out example above any of these BASIC statements will have the same result LPRINT CHRS 27 W CHRS 1 LPRINT CHRS 27 W CHRS 49 LPRINT CHRS 27 W1 Even though there are many commands that require the use of ASCII code 0 the character 0 ASCII code 48 cannot be substituted In these cases instead of an unadorned 0 we will show CHR 0 each time these commands are referenced E Some problem codes Before we go too far we need to mention some codes that may cause you problem Nearly all BASICs change some of the ASCII codes between your BASIC program and your printer IBM s Microsoft BASIC adds a CHR 10 a line feed to a CHR 13 a carriage return before sending it on Another problem code is ASCII 26 Once again we refer to Appendix H where some more specific infor mation awaits That s it for the basics You are ready to learn how to use the many features of your printer MEMO CHAPTER 5 PRINTING TEXT Subjects we ll cover in Chapter 5 include e Letter quality LQ characters e Underlining and overlining e Superscripts and subscripts e Print boldface e Print pitches The rest of this manual will show you a little BASIC just enough for you to use your printer We re not going to try to make you an expert programmer though only get yo
87. tion you can set them manually just like a typewriter by the following procedures 1 Set the Off Line mode by pressing the On Line key 2 While holding the Mode key press one of the following keys TOF key Left margin set Paper Feed key Right margin set 3 While holding the two keys the print head moves across the page step by step 4 When the print head goes to the position where you want to set margin release the two keys So the printer acknowledges the margin with the sound of beep CONNECTING THE PRINTER Now that you ve assembled and tested your printer you re surely looking foward to using it forward what you bought it for printing We re almost there just connect it to your computer as follows Figure 2 14 Connect the cable like this 25 1 Make sure that both your computer and printer are turn ed off 2 Connect the printer end of the interface cable to the con nector socket at the right rear of the printer as shown in Figure 2 14 3 Connect the other end of the cable to your computer as described in the computer manual 26 MEMO CHAPTER 3 USING COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE Subjects we ll cover in Chapter 3 include e Using your printer with SuperCalc Using your printer with word processors Many of you purchased this printer to use with commercial software You made a good choice because this printer is com patible with most commercial program from
88. to disengage the three tabs at the front then lift it off the rest of the way To replace the cover just slide the tabs in at the front and lower it into place Figure 1 2 shows the proper posi tion and movement for both removing and replacing the cover Printer cover Figure 1 2 Remove the printer cover by lifting carefully E Removing the packing tube The printer is shipped with a protective spiral tube to keep the print head from being damaged during shipping We have to remove this tube First take off the printer cover See the tube on the carriage rail Figure 1 3 Pull it off carefully Spiral tube Figure 1 3 Remove the protective tube from the carriage rail Removing shipping screws There are two shipping screws inside the printer used to hold the internal chassis securely to the lower case during shipping To get at these remove the printer cover from the printer Then remove the screws with a Phillips screwdriver as shown in Figure 1 4 You ll be smart to save these screws along with the rest of the packing material and the shipping carton in case you ever have to ship the printer Tape the screws somewhere on the car ton or packing Figure 1 4 There are two shipping screws inside the printer dur ing shipping They should be removed before use Installing the platen knob This is the knob that turns the rubber platen cylinder It fits into the hole in the
89. to make one line feed of n 180 inch but does not change the setting of the line spacing Try this program to see how it works 10 Demo of one time line feeds 20 LPRINT LINE NUMBER 1 30 LPRINT LINE NUMBER 2 40 One time line feed 50 LPRINT CHRS 27 J CHRS 100 60 LPRINT LINE NUMBER 3 70 LPRINT LINE NUMBER 4 80 END Here is what your printer will produce LINE NUMBER 1 LINE NUMBER 2 LINE NUMBER 3 LINE NUMBER 4 58 The ESC J CHR 100 in line 50 changes the spacing to 100 180 inches for one line only without moving the printhead The rest of the lines printed with the normal line spacing Notice that both line 30 and line 50 end with semicolons This prevents the normal line feed from occurring The lt ESC j CHR command works the same way except that the paper moves in the opposite direction Try this simple change to your program and see what a difference it makes 40 One time reverse line feed 50 LPRINT CHRS 27 j CHRS 100 LINE NUMBER 3 LINE NUMBER 4 LINE NUMBER 1 LINE NUMBER 2 PAGE CONTROL Now that we have seen how to control line spacing we can go on to page control positioning the printing on the page and ad justing the paper length Form feed The simplest forms control code is the form feed Form feed or lt FF gt is CHR 12 and causes the printer to move the paper to the top of the next sheet Try it by changing lines 40 and 50 to t
90. to see how the default tabs work 10 Demo of horizontal tabbing 20 LPRINT ONE CHRS 9 TWO CHRS 9 THREE CHRS 9 FOUR Here s what you should get ONE TWO THREE FOUR Even though the words are different length they are spaced out evenly by the horizontal tabs Now add the following line to your program to set different horizontal tabs 65 15 LPRINT CHR 27 D CHRS 7 CHRS 14 CHRS 21 CHRS 0 ESC D is the command to begin setting horizontal tabs It must be followed by characters representing the positions that you want the tabs set In our program we are setting tabs in col umns 7 14 and 21 The CHR 0 at the end ends the string of tabs In fact any character that is not greater than the previous one will stop setting tabs This means that you must put all your tab values in order from least to greatest or they won t all get set When you run the program now it produces this ONE TWO THREE FOUR The words are now closer together but still evenly spaced To reset the default tabs use the following program LPRINT CHRS 27 e0 CHRS 8 This command sets the horizontal tab to every eight columns Table 6 6 Horizontal tab commands Advance to next tab position CHR 9 ESC gt D CHR a1 Set tabs at n1 n2 etc CHR n2 CHRS 0 ESC e 0 CHRS E One time horizontal tabs Suppose you need to move to a position across the page but you on
91. tuvwxyz i 7 8 amp 0123456789 lt gt 7 ABCDEFGHIJ fghijkimnopqrstuvwxyz 35 0123456789 lt gt 8ABCDEFGHIJK ghijkimnoparstuvwxyz 7 amp 0123456789 5 lt gt ABCDEFGHIJKL hijklmnopaqrstuvwxyz T A he eg O Paper Feed key Self test 1 long On Line key Self test 2 short Were you surprised It s fast isn t it About 250 characters a second with draft characters and 83 characters a second with LQ characters When you want to terminate the long self test function turn off the power switch E Hex dump Can you guess what a hex dump is No it s not where witches throw away useless spells A hex dump is an advanced ability with your printer that you can use in certain cases to find a problem with your system Fortunately such problems rarely arise but the hex dump is available if one does We ll go over hex dump in Chapter 7 Right now we ll just tell you how to make a hex dump 22 1 Plug in the printer don t turn it on yet 2 Insert a sheet of paper as you did for the self tests 3 While holding down both the Paper Feed and Mode keys turn on the power switch When you want to terminate the hex dump function turn off the power switch MW Panel modes As you ll learn in Chapter 5 this printer has many software controls But if you want to print in one fixed mode ignoring the control codes these Panel modes take effect for yo
92. u To set the Panel modes follow the procedures 1 Plug in the printer don t turn it on yet 2 While holding the key or keys as shown below turn on the power switch Key Type of Panel mode Type Style Character set type Mode Print quality draft or LQ Print pitch Print pitch TOF All of the above Notice that these modes stay on with ignoring the relative con trol codes until you turn off the printer 9 pin graphics emulation mode You already know that this printer represents the state of the art in tack sharp 24 pin text printing To complete the text abili ty of this printer we have also the ability to do dot graphics 9 pin printing The IBM graphics printer mode utilizes 9 pin graphics software which is commonly used by the IBM printer The IBM printer requires a different line feed pitch of either n 72nd or n 216th inches This printer normally uses a pitch of n 180th inches due to its 24 pin design To avoid software in compatibility with existing IBM graphics programs this printer has been designed to most closely emulate the requirements for 9 pin dot graphics compatibility This unique 9 pin graphics emulation mode can be envoked as follows 23 a 1 Plug in the printer don t turn it on yet 2 While holding the TOF key and the Paper Feed key turn on the power switch When you want to cancel this mode turn off the power switch During normal operation Forward m
93. u started All our examples will be given in Microsoft BASIC as used by the IBM Personal Computer but remember that you don t need to know BASIC to use your printer s features Just use the same ASCII codes as we do in our examples with all DIP switches are set on condition If your computer doesn t use Microsoft BASIC look in the ap pendix to see what changes you need for your BASIC You have already printed a few lines on your printer Now it s time to start looking at the many variations of printing style that you have available to you SOME SPECIAL KINDS OF TEXT If you looked carefully at your printer s self test you noticed that it can print many styles But there s more Your printer can underline or overline characters print superscripts and subscripts and perhaps most exciting print letter quality characters Letter Quality characters This printer s Letter Quality sometimes abbreviated as LQ character set is ideal for correspondence and other important 40 printing for it takes a keen eye to detect that it is from a dot matrix printer Normally your printer prints draft quality characters when the DIP switch 1 4 is set off This is adequate for most work and it prints fastest But for the final printout try Letter Quality The program below shows how 10 Demo of LQ character set 20 LPRINT CHR 27 x1 30 LPRINT This line shows LETTER QUALITY 40 LPRINT CHRS 27 x0 50 LPRINT Thi
94. ue the hexadecimal ASCII value and the control value For example the code that causes the printer to advance the paper one line is ASCII 10 decimal This code is commonly referred to by all the following names Line feed its name LF the abbreviation of its name ASCII 10 its decimal value ASCII amp H0A its hexadecimal value the amp H signifies hex CHR 10 the way it s used in BASIC control the way you send it from a keyboard There s a chart in Appendix B that shows these side by side so that you can convert back and forth The reason that we are telling you all this about ASCII codes is that people are not very consistent about how they describe ASCII codes We are going to help you use your printer with commercial software but we don t know what its documenta tion is going to call the various codes So if you know all the dif ferent things that the codes might be called it will be easier to figure out what it is trying to tell you Now armed with the knowledge of what to look for you can delve into manuals of your commercial software and dig out the secrets of how to send control codes to your printer When you find the method that your program uses then you can shop through this manual to find the function that you want to use By translating the codes from the system that we use to the system that your tommercial software uses you should be able to use many of your printe
95. varying the width of the character itself and the spaces around it you can actually 96 create proportional width characters that print at draft speed When defining draft characters the number of printed col umns m1 cannot exceed 9 and the sum of m0 m1 m2 can not exceed 12 Assigning a value to your character We ve done a pretty through job of designing and describing a user defined character But this printer has room for 128 download characters how does it knows which standard character we want to print every character is assigned a unique number The standard characters are assigned the ASCII code numbers from 0 to 255 For the download character sets you can define any positions between 0 to 127 This means that once a character is defined and assigned a value and the download character set is selected you can use that character on the printer the same way you would any standard character You can send the character with the same ASCII value You can also access the character from a BASIC program with the CHR function The entire range of ASCII codes from 0 to 127 can be used 123456789 123456789 128 el a De ea 32 ee 16 Ist byte 8 byte 4 2 C4 128 ASCII code 60 ASCII code 61 32 Left space 1 Left space 7 2nd 16 i ae S Right space 2 hie Right space 2 af 16 ei i Crigisiel o a ata Azs TOO 3m 1206 8 mt al r 64 3rd 8 106 9 3rd
96. you should turn DIP switch 2 6 off so that your printer will add the line feed for you When you have DIP switch 2 6 off the printer will do the same thing when it receives a carriage return as it does when it receives a line feed If you find that your printer double spaces when it should single space then you probably need to turn DIP switch 2 6 on Table 6 1 Line feed commands Return print head to left margin CHR 13 CHR 10 E Changing the line spacing When you turn your printer on the line spacing is set to 6 lines per inch or 8 lines per inch if DIP switch 2 8 is off This is fine for most printing applications but sometimes you may want something different Your printer makes it easy to set the line spacing to whatever you want Try this program to see how easy it is to change the line spac ing 10 Demo of line spacing 20 FOR I 1 TO 20 30 IF I 13 THEN 60 40 LPRINT CHRS 27 A CHRS 1 CHRS 27 2 SO LPRINT THIS LINE SPACING IS SET TO I 60 NEXT I 70 LPRINT THIS LINE SPACING IS SET TO 1 6 INCH 80 LPRINT CHRS 27 A CHRS 10 CHRS 27 2 90 END This is what you will get 55 RE THIS LINE SPACING SET TO 9 THIS LINE SPACING IS SET TO 10 THIS LINE SPACING IS SET TO 11 THIS LINE SPACING IS SET TO 12 THIS LINE SPACING IS SET TO 14 THIS LINE SPACING IS SET TO 15 THIS LINE SPACING IS SET TO 16 THIS LINE SPACING IS SET TO 17 THIS LINE SPACING IS SET TO 18 THIS LINE SPACING IS SET T
97. you with a way to use some of your printer s advanced features WordStar has four special commands that you can use to access your printer s features These are called user printer controls and are control P Q control P W control P E and control P R You might use two of these to turn boldface on and off and the other two for some other function The process of setting up these codes is called patching and is done with the install program that comes with WordStar The procedure is fairly involved but it is explained in the WordStar manual If you have trouble figuring it out ask for assistance where you bought WordStar 32 MEMO CHAPTER 4 CONTROLLING WITH BASIC Subjects we ll cover in Chapter 4 include e Listing BASIC programs on the printer e Printing from BASIC e CHR S function Command syntax e Problem codes In this chapter we will be teaching you how to use your printer s features using the BASIC programming language It is easy to communicate with your printer from BASIC and though it has its detrators BASIC is the nearest thing to a universal language among users of personal computers But remember that it s not the only way to communicate with your printer as we have already seen SOME BASICS ABOUT BASIC E First steps The first things that a beginner learns to do are to list a pro gram and to print a character string Certainly these are the easiest operations one c
98. your printer Quite an achievement isn t it Let s get done with this simple stuff so that we can go on to something interesting M The CHR function We mentioned CHR in Chapter 3 as one way to express ASCII codes We are going to use it a lot in communicating with this printer This printer uses many of the ASCII code that don t represent letters and numbers The CHR function gives us an easy way to send these codes to the printer Try this to see how the CHR function works NEW 10 LPRINT CHR 80 RUN That should print a P for Printer If you check the chart in Appendix B you will see that 80 is the ASCII code for P E Control codes This printer uses many of the non printing ASCII codes for control codes These codes perform a function rather than print ing a character Let s try an easy one right now NEW 10 LPRINT CHRS 7 RUN 36 Where did that noise come from That s the printer s bell We will learn more about it in Chapter 5 We just wanted to il lustrate a code that causes the printer to perform a function E The escape codes Back when the ASCII system was set up computer equip ment was relatively simple and thirty three control codes were considered sufficient at the time The American Standards people realized that eventually more control codes would be needed so they included the escape ESC code to allow almost any number of additional codes to be defined when they became necessa

Star Micronics NB-15 User's Manual

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