On Tue, 3 Mar 2009, brandt@subnet.at wrote:

Does anybody Know how to control a dot matrix printer troughout the seriell port

First you need to install the [comport] class or any equivalent. It's best to use my hacked version because none of the other versions can't handle flow-control properly.

Second you need to figure out the wire protocol. Serial port is called serial port because it's using the RS-232 protocol, but this protocol has many variants and they are not autodetected. For example, you may have to say: speed 9600 bits/second, 8 data bits per byte, 1 stop bit per byte, no parity, CTS/RTS flow-control.

Third you need to figure out the application protocol. The printer's manual may say, for example, that it's an Epson-compatible printer, or it may have a switch between Epson-compatible and a different mode. Old manuals often give you a list of all commands you can do on that printer, especially because they often offer extensions to the standard protocol they are basing themselves on, or sometimes because they have a completely different protocol.

Most of those printers are based on escape-sequences starting with the escape-code ("ascii" # 27), which may sound familiar, but those sequences are not related with any of the screen-and-keyboard escape-sequences (VT/ANSI) used on BBSes and unix operating systems.

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