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From: elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm
Subject: Re: printer files
Message-ID: <1061@killer.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 27-Jun-87 04:01:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: killer.1061
Posted: Sat Jun 27 04:01:06 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 2-Jul-87 03:23:56 EDT
References: <35aa2e58.44e6@apollo.uucp>
Organization: Bayou Telecommunications
Lines: 55

in article <35aa2e58.44e6@apollo.uucp>, connors_g@apollo.uucp (Gary Connors) says:
> To: comp.sys.cbm@news
> 
> Hi,
> I have a C64, a Blue Chip 10/12 daisey-wheel printer,
> and Paperback Writer64(now Pocket-writer or something
> like that). I have been trying to set up my printer
> files and still haven't been able to get all my options
> working. For instance, shouldn't the printer be able to
> switch from 10 pitch to 12 pich as the name implies?
> Also, Is it normal to have to shut the disk drive off 
> to access the printer and vise versa? Another thing 
> that always confuses me is the differance between
> ASCII and Commodore characters. 

Well, I have a D12/10. I use it to print out the final versions of all my
manuals (I set it to printing at 6pm Friday evening, and when I get back in at
2am, it's finished). I've noticed that it doesn't interact well with disk
drives. Specifically, if the SEL light is blinking, it locks up the serial
bus, and if my 1571 clicks into BURST mode (I'm using it with Wordpro-128), it
chimes in and crashes the 1571. If you are using a FASTLOAD cartridge with
your C-64, you probably have the same problem, since it does basically the
same thing that the 1571 does for the C-128. The interface on that thing just
sux royally.

BTW, for anybody who wants to use Wordpro-128, the correct printer driver for
perportional spacing is "silver rd 550 ps"... first you must load up the
device-configuration utility and change it so that it opens to channel #7 and
doesn't shove linefeeds, only carriage returns, and you need to flip the
printer to ASCII (because Wordpro does the CSCII-ASCII conversion for you). I
just finished reading the Wordpro-128 manual, and it looks like it'll do
everything that I ever wanted to do... for example, it makes indexing and
table of contents and referencing something on another page so ELEMENTARY.
Dunno if the C64 version has all those features, though....

As for the difference between Real ASCII and Commodore ASCII (commonly called
"Half ASCII" by those in the know :-): Eons and eons ago, Commodore introduced
a computer called the "Pet". It had only uppercase letters and those little
graphics symbols. A few eons later, Commodore upgraded the Pet to have
upper/lowercase. But instead of putting the lowercase characters up there
where the graphics characters live, they put them down where the uppercase
characters normally live. It has been speculated that the engineer who did
that case flip-flop was experimenting with LSD that week..... anyhow,
BASICALLY, Commodore ASCII is Real ASCII with the cases flip-flopped. Although
actually, if you type an uppercase character from BASIC, it's just the
lowercase character with the hi bit set (makes for some real neat case
conversion tricks in assembly language!). You see, for some reason, they
mapped the uppercase chraters into the character set TWICE!

I'd be curious to hear about a) how Commodore ASCII got invented, and b)
whether Steve Punter borrowed from Precision Software, or Precision Software
ripped off Steve Punter to create Easy Script (which has the SAME BASIC
COMMAND SET!).

  Eric Green {ihn04,cbosgd}!killer!elg  elg@usl.CSNET