Re: Apple II FAQs Printers

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

TEXAS II - AppleWorks <a2mg@aol.comNomail> wrote:

> I believe the other switches don't matter. That's what I have heard.

I thought I might as well add my two cents here.  I haven't used a
Grappler+ either, but I do have the manual.

It is quite clear from the manual that the only purpose of DIP switches
2, 3 and 4 is to tell the card which brand of printer you have, so that
the Grappler can send the correct commands for doing graphics dumps.

If you are outputting text, or are using software with a specific driver
for the printer (which isn't depending on the Grappler's own screen
dumping facility) then these three switches are irrelevant.

DIP switch 1 is important.  In the ON (right, "+") position, the most
significant bit of each character is not transmitted to the printer (I
read this as "bit 7 is forced to zero in data transmitted to the
printer").  This may be important with Applesoft BASIC, since it always
sets the high order bit in characters passed to the output device, which
might cause problems with some printers.

If you want to be able to send 8-bit data to the printer, this switch
must be OFF (left, "-").

Since the DeskJet uses PCL, and PCL is entirely based on 7-bit ASCII
(except for graphics data), you can leave this switch set OFF or ON as
you see fit, _unless_ you want to use something like SuperFonts, which
needs to send 8-bit graphical data to the printer.
-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P O Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand