APPENDIX N:
NON-STANDARD PRINTERS
======================================================================== B0193XK, Rev A 18.9 Adding Nonstandard Printers to I/A Series Systems Support for a new printer type on the I/A Series system is a product enhancement request. The I/A Series Commserver is not an industry standard connection like the parallel port on an AT style Personal Computer. The two current types of monochrome/report type printers, the Okidata and Brother printers, require special Foxboro made cables in order to function properly on the Commserver. Also, SystemConfigurator and Software Install only allow selecting from a list of Foxboro applied printers, there is no mechanism to configure individual options for a specific type of printer. With respect to special device drivers, the VENIX/Vrtx (AP10/20 & PW), SUN OS 4.1 (Model 50) and Solaris (Model 51), all allow specifying how the "lp" spooler should function with a specific printer. To apply a nonstandard printer to an I/A Series Commserver for monochrome ASCII output (i.e. reports, file print, etc.) a 25 pin cable would be needed to connect to Foxboro cable P0800AZ, which connects to the Commserver. The P0800AZ cable is as follows: Pin 2 TD Pin 3 RD Pin 4 RTS Pin 5 CTS Pin 6 DSR Pin 7 GND Pin 8 DCD Pin 20 DTR Flow control is XON/OFF Baud rate is 9600 On I/A Series, a Dot-Matrix printer should be configured. This expects an Epson emulation printer. Most I/A Series reports are ASCII data plus linefeed characters. Any changes, setup codes, mapping for linefeed, etc. which are required for the specific printer can be made to the lp spooler by modifying /etc/termcap on VENIX/Vrtx (AP10/20 & PW), /etc/printcap SUN OS 4.1 (Model 50)and the /etc/lp/interfaces/lp_standard file on Solaris (Model 51). A common issue is the need to map linefeed characters to carriage-return/linefeed character pairs. This occurs when implementing printers designed for DOS-based operating systems on a UNIX system. In DOS, ASCII files contain both a linefeed and carriage-return which is used by the printer. A discussion of this is provided below: (as an excerpt from PEN 349 REV B Hewlett-Packard Color InkJet Printer (PaintJet) Replacement.)