Re: Epson Stylus with Serial Interface to IIgs

["Warren Ernst" <wernst@gmail.com>]

Hmmm.

Let me reply to you as a strange combination of "experts:" I used to do
tech support for Beagle Bros in the Beagle Building, and I currently
(among other things) write Epson printer user guides, and I am
currently writing this from the Epson America HQ building in Long
Beach, CA.

Now then. In the Apple II world, Epson printers were ALWAYS parallel
devices, meaning you should have a parallel card (I prefer Grappler
products, but I have an Epson APL card that works too) to hook it up. I
would expect a Stylus Color 800 to still respond to the Epson 24-pin
dot matrix command language (ESCP/2) just fine through a parallel port.
I too, would also expect the printer to output text for a program set
to an Epson MX80/FT printer (I have one of these too.)

If you were using TimeOut Superfonts, or some other Beagle printing
program, to use the Epson, you would have to set the printer driver,
the parallel card driver, AND set the word length to 7-bit. If you had
an Imagewriter, you would select the printer driver, the serial port
driver (GS port, IIc port, SSC, or whatever) AND set the word length to
8-bit.

I have this gut feeling that the Epson doesn't know how to interpret
ESCP/2 from the serial port because it is an 8-bit word length
connection. I can't find anyone in the building who can remember
anything back that far, so I can't prove that.

Also, that serial connection is designed for older Macintoshs, and it
required the use of an Epson driver. I am pretty sure the driver back
then is a QuickDraw bitmap converter, and is probably isn't speaking
ESCP/2 to the printer as a result. I could be wrong here too.

I mention this because it may be that the printer is not set up to
interpret a character stream through the serial port IN ANY CAPACITY.
That would pretty much kill any thought of doing a "PR#1" at a basic
prompt and getting text to print through the serial port.

Honestly, I can see no reason to not use a parallel card to print to
your printer, especially since you've established that it works. That's
what I would do.

-Warr




Polymorph wrote:
> a2aviator@gmail.com wrote:
> > Polymorph wrote:
> >  work.
> >
> > > Have I bought the wrong cable? Need the Harmonie drivers? Something
> > > else that I'm not aware of?
> >
> > It's the right cable, as long as it's an ImageWriter II peripheral
> > cable, Apple called it a 'system 8' cable. It can NOT be a straight
> > through cable.
> >
> > Use an Epson 24 pin printer driver selected to the serial port. IIRC
> > they should even be downwardly compatible to the FX/MX 80 in some way.
> >
> > Harmony or Independence should work. Harmony was a better set of
> > drivers.
>
> I'll check my cable tonight, but it is supposed to be an Imagewriter II
> cable (ie. not straight through).
>
> If I'm not using any particular driver and boot into DOS or PRODOS,
> should I be able to PR#1 and print from the command prompt? Because at
> the moment I cannot do this.
>
> Is there any special settings required on the serial port (from the
> IIgs control panel)?
> 
> thanks,
> -p