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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbatt!ucbvax!ARDEC.ARPA!ekijak
From: ekijak@ARDEC.ARPA.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit
Subject: Re:  ATARI BASIC NEEDED
Message-ID: <8702051014.aa27301@ARDEC-3.ARDEC.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 5-Feb-87 10:14:17 EST
Article-I.D.: ARDEC-3.8702051014.aa27301
Posted: Thu Feb  5 10:14:17 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Feb-87 18:25:00 EST
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 19

The DEC LA-50 printer uses a serial port and seems to work the same as a crt
terminal.  By that I mean if you feed the printer the same bit stream that's
going into your terminal, whatever appears on the screen will be printed on the
paper.  Also, if the sequence ctl-[ ( 0 (with no spaces) to switch the terminal
into its alternate character set are received by the printer, it too will
switch to its alternate character set.  (I'm not sure but this seems to be a
vt-52 or vt-100 or ANSI standardized function).  With the alternate character
set you can draw neat boxes around (Capital letter) words, and draw horizontal,
vertical lines, any of four corners, any of four tees, and crossing lines.
This lets you produce organization charts and simple line drawings that are
totally made up of ascii characters so that you can include them in electronic
mail messages, and transfer files using text file transfer techniques without
needing binary file transfer techniques.  The only problem is that your computer
may have different alternate character set than the vt-100? standard.  To get
back to the default character set, send the sequence ctl-[ ( B without any
spaces between the characters, of course.  (These sequences work on a vt-100
type terminal and LA-50 printer, they may be different for your terminal).
Also, you may or may not need a null modem device at the printer if you feed
it the same bit stream as your terminal.