Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!sumax!thebes!camco!bill From: bill@camco.Celestial.COM (Bill Campbell) Newsgroups: comp.sys.tandy Subject: Re: Help hooking Daisy Wheel Printer II to IBM pc Message-ID: <191@camco.Celestial.COM> Date: 4 Oct 90 15:34:10 GMT References: <6329@hub.ucsb.edu> <1990Sep24.231949.4737@cbnewsc.att.com> <1990Oct2.155905.6734@techbook.com> Distribution: usa Organization: Celestial Software, Mercer Island, WA Lines: 68 In article <1990Oct2.155905.6734@techbook.com> fzsitvay@techbook.com (Frank Zsitvay) writes: :In article <1990Sep24.231949.4737@cbnewsc.att.com> res@cbnewsc.att.com (Rich Strebendt) writes: :Q>The DW-II is much to primitive to have that level of sophistication. :>between the printer and the MS-DOS or UNIX machines. There is a lead :>in the cable that the IBM/UNIX world interprets as a "wait a while, my :>buffer is full" signal, but Tandy uses as a "I got your last :>character" signal. Upon receiving a character the DW-II printer :>raises that signal and waits for the next character to arrive (in case :>it is able to optimize the resulting carriage movements). The :>non-Tandy machine sees the signal and waits until it is removed by the :>printer. After about 100milliseconds the printer decides to go ahead :>and print the character, then drops the signal. The other machine now :>send the next character and the whole game starts over. The result is :>that the printer is sloooooooowed way down to 10 char/sec. instead of :>the appreciably higher speed (43ch/sec?) that it runs on a Tandy :>machine. It is really painful listening to the printer :>putt-putt-putting along instead of ripping out lines of text as a :>printer should. :> : the dwp II HAS no buffer per se. it raises that line to tell :the host computer to stop sending while it prints the character it :just received. this is the way most printers of its type and vintage :did. : : i would suspect the real offender is the non-tandy machine. it :is possible that the design of the parallel port on the non tandy :machine was meant for printers that have a buffer, and don't need :a quick response time on that line. (almost all dot matrix printers :buffer at least a line.) : : to work a way around the no form feed problem, you'll probably have to :write a program in gwbasic (if that's all you have) that prints the :document for you, and have it emulate a form feed. (count the number of :lines printed thus far, when you get a form feed print blank lines (CRs) :until you reach 66, and reset your line count.). : :>I would recommend that the next thing you do with your DW-II is fill :>it with concrete, add an eye=bolt to the top, and use it as a boat :>anchor. : : gee, what a senseless waste of perfectly good industrial strength :printing machinery!!!! (and also has the extra feature of testing :the seismic stability of your house. ;) : : :-- :fzsitvay@techbook.COM - one of these days i'll get it right... : :Version 2 of anything is usually the version that works. The solution may well be to buy a Tandy printer cable. These are non-standard and swap a couple of wires that have something to do with handshaking. I know that many slow printing problems with Xenix on Tandy systems disappear if you are using the Tandy cables. When the DWII is working properly it was one of the fastest daisy wheel printers available, primarily because of its logical print optimization. It would run circles around nominally faster printers that didn't skip whitespace and blank lines fast. I would be interested in picking up a couple of DWIIs if the price is right. Bill. -- INTERNET: bill@Celestial.COM Bill Campbell; Celestial Software UUCP: ...!thebes!camco!bill 6641 East Mercer Way uunet!camco!bill Mercer Island, WA 98040; (206) 947-5591