[Coco] OS-9 Floppy / Printer configuration?

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday, July 27, 2010 09:48:53 am Bob Devries did opine:

> Chad,
> 
> One way to snd an initialisation string to your printer is using the
> DISPLAY command, and redirecting thae output to the printer device
> (/P), like this:
> 
> DISPLAY 1B 35 20 >/P
> 
> If you need to have that done everytime you boot the DeskMate disk, you
> can put it into your STARTUP file, along with the XMODE command line to
> set the baud rate. Of course, the XMODE command should go first, before
> the DISPLAY one.
> 
> Hope that helps.
> 
> Regards, Bob Devries
> Dalby, QLD, Australia
> 
> PS: hehe, helping you with NitrOS9 is easier than helping my wife to
> learn English ;)
 
Chuckle, yes I can imagine Bob.  Its bad enough when two different dialects 
of English are talking.

However I would add the caution that the printer driver, unless it has been 
fine tuned, needs a tuneport session in order to get above say 600 baud, 
with enough baud rate accuracy.  I don't know if its because I have a 6309 
in my coco3 or what, but at 9600 baud, the default bau=6 actually gets me 
about 15 kilobaud, and tuneport says the default timing is '13' but to get 
9600, I have to use a value of 29 or 30.  This checked by the timebase of 
my oscilloscope, something that not every one has.

In my case, I could disable my script on this machine, then watch the leds 
on the adapter and tuneport till a valid speed is obtained as evidenced by 
the data leds on the adapter.  If the speed is off by more than a few 
percent, the leds go dark and no data is sent.  Sort of the hard way, but 
it could be made to work.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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