Re: Unidentified card

[dalloff@freenet.columbus.oh.us (Dave Althoff)]

Mike Sentlinger (none@awinc.com) wrote:
: 	I have an apple iigs which I recently picked up, in it, there is a 
: card marked "APL B""SP-201-EP-O". There are no other interfaces on it but a 
: 20-pin male conector on the circuit board, to which was connected a cable with 
: a printer interface on its end. For this reason, I assumed it was a printer 
: card. I hooked up a raven printer to it (we normally use it on our IBM) but it 
: won't prime it when I boot up. The card was in slot 5 when I got the computer. 
: Does anyone know what kind of card this is? Can I use an IBM printer with my 
: iigs? Is it something I'm doing wrong? Thanks. Gabe.   msentlin@awinc.com

In other words, the cable has the Centronics-36 connector on the end?

This may well be an Epson APL board, a parallel interface card.

As for the printer not "prime"ing when you boot up, there are two things
to check.  First, make sure that whatever slot the board is in is set to
"Your Card" on the IIgs.  That's in the control panel, use
OpenApple-Control-Esc to get to it in case you're not familiar with the
GS.  I suggest putting the board into Slot #1 unless you're planning to
use the printer port.

Second, the Apple ][ does not send a CR to the parallel port the way that
the MS-DOS machines do when the system boots.  Mostly because the Apple
has no way of knowing what card will be in a particular slot, while an
MS-DOS machine can simply assume that an LPT: port will be a printer. 
Some printer cards will do this printer-reset on power-up.

To test the card and find out if it is a printer card, hook it to your
printer, install it in a slot in the GS, and make sure that the slot is
set to "Your Card."  Re-boot the GS after changing the control panel.  You
don't need to actually boot the machine to run this test...in fact, it
might be easier if you don't.  When you see the splash screen identifying
the computer (accompanied by a "boink"), hold the CONTROL key and press
[RESET].  That's the key with the triangle on it at the top of the
keyboard if you have a GS keyboard.; otherwise it's marked "RESET". 8-)
You may have to hit RESET more than once to get the desired result, which is:


]
(with a cursor, accompanied by a "boink")

Type "PR#n", substituting the slot number of your printer card for the
"n", i.e.:
]PR#1
if the card is in slot #1.

Then hit RETURN a couple of times.  You may or may not see the "]"
characters on the screen, but everything you type should appear on the
printer.  Type "PR#0" to shut the printer off.  If this happens, then
you're in good shape and you have a working parallel printer card.

Let us know how it all works out!

--Dave Althoff, Jr.
-- 
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