Re: Imagewriter II with a PC

[rg@datcon.co.uk (Richard Gledhill)]

Lord High Bit Counter of The Robotic Imperium (pads@ravel.udel.edu) wrote:
	^---------- nice name!

: I purchased a PC-clone about 9 months ago, and wanted to use my Imagewriter
: with it as a printer. Knowing nothing about serial ports, etc, I took one
: look at the vastly different cables and gave up. Now I have found a small
: adapter cable that is Apple Serial on one end, and IBM 25 pin serial on the
: other. I also have a 25 to 9 pin IBM serial cable. In my mind, hooking all
: of these together should give me a functioning printer, because just 
: hooking up an ancient Citizen printer to my parallel port functions.
: To test the printer I have a small text file the I try to copy to the
: printer in DOS:
: C:\TEXTFILE>copy test.txt com2
: General Failure Writing to COM2
: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?
: HELP ME PLEASE!!!!!!
: If you know what I need to do please respond to this article or post a 
: followup. Do I need to install a special driver or something?
: Is there a way to get it set up for windows at least?
: Am I fighting a lost cause?
: Any help will be met with Undying gratitiude.
: Thanks
: Steve Padbury

I think your problem may be that the ImageWriter is a parallel printer.
I don't know anything about it, but the majority of printers these days
are parallel, so unless your Apple serial cable is actually an Apple
Parallel to PC serial, then you don't stand any chance, I'm afraid.  In
fact, if you connect a serial COM port to a parallel printer, you risk
damaging one or the other!

If it is a parallel printer (and I would imagine it is), then you need a
Serial<->Parallel convertor between the printer and the Apple<->PC cable.
Then it should work.

Hope this helps!

-Richard
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From: Richard Gledhill                         Reach me at rg@datcon.co.uk
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