Printer bidirectional communication
  • Butterfly
    Butterfly
    Posts: 66 from 2003/10/5
    From: Rapallo (GE) I...
    Hi all,
    not sure if it can be thought better as a software
    or hardware topic, however...

    I'm attempting bi directional communication with a
    printer with no success (what that means ? Simple, I
    send the printer some command which implies a reply,
    that's really low level, technical stuff, don't care
    of it... ;)

    I firstly tried with an UPAR: assign created with
    the port-handler, either connecting the printer to
    the parallel port (via parallel.device) then connecting
    it to USB (via usbparallel.device). No reply, wait
    forever.

    Then I went the low level way using the device
    read and write commands: with the parallel port
    the read command returns -3 (unsupported command).
    Oh well... so I searched the web and found that
    Pegasos parallel port is stuck to uni directional
    mode. Is that true ? Well, at least 2+2 makes 4
    (a sad 4, I would say).

    Doing the same with the printer connected to USB
    and using the usbparallel.device, the read command
    never returns. I assume my communication protocol
    is correct (even if taken by reverse engineer a
    PC port sniffing...). Should I think that
    usbparallel.device is some way broken too ??
    I need know that, because atm I can't figure out
    until which point it's me and until which it's the
    hardware/OS failing.

    (My config is PegII with MOS 1.4.5)

    Thanks for any in-topic hint and answer!
    /&
  • »25.10.08 - 18:10
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  • MorphOS Developer
    March
    Posts: 91 from 2003/7/30
    From: Warsaw, Poland
    You should try to get in touch with Sonic. AFAIR he played a bit with Pegasos parallel port and even made his own device for it that was supposed to be better that the standard parallel.device. port-handler does not support reading at all (well, this will be fixed in the future). No idea about usbparallel.device. Maybe you should try to contact Platon about it.
    Marek Szyprowski ...... happy MorphOS, AmigaOS and Debian/Linux user ........
  • »25.10.08 - 20:45
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  • Butterfly
    Butterfly
    Posts: 66 from 2003/10/5
    From: Rapallo (GE) I...
    March,
    >You should try to get in touch with Sonic. AFAIR he
    >played a bit with Pegasos parallel port and even made
    >his own device for it that was supposed to be better
    >that the standard parallel.device.

    Already contacted, still no reply. I assume he's busy or
    outdoor.

    >port-handler does not support reading at all (well, this
    >will be fixed in the future).

    I also tried the port-handler (68K) by Stephan Rupprecht
    which was supposed to work well but the behavior is
    identical

    >No idea about usbparallel.device. Maybe you should try
    >to contact Platon about it.

    Ehr... yes, surely... even if I preferred he had ended
    up in this thread sooner or later :o)

    /&
  • »25.10.08 - 21:23
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  • MorphOS Developer
    jacadcaps
    Posts: 3092 from 2003/3/5
    From: Canada
    Afair MorphOS' parallel.device only implements enough for common printers to work and nothing related to bi-directional communication.
  • »27.10.08 - 07:29
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    Posts: 408 from 2004/7/15
    From: Russia, Moscow
    Reviving the topic...
    I managed to get hold of old but good LaserJet 4 Plus. It has a parallel port and can provide status to the computer. So far i've got a testbed...
    iPod, iBook, iMac,... iRobot?
  • »13.02.09 - 07:04
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