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From: dar@cblpf.ATT.COM (David A. Roth)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm
Subject: Re: printer files
Message-ID: <568@cblpf.ATT.COM>
Date: Thu, 2-Jul-87 15:40:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: cblpf.568
Posted: Thu Jul  2 15:40:59 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Jul-87 10:07:50 EDT
References: <35aa2e58.44e6@apollo.uucp|<1061@killer.UUCP>
Organization: Columbus, Ohio
Lines: 68

|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


Speaking of Blue Chip printers, I have one too. Has anyone gotten one
to work on non-commodore computers that have an RS-232 port? What is
required?

Thanks in advance.


AT&T Bell Laboratories
David A. Roth 
Columbus, Ohio
uucp:	cbosgd!cblpf!dar