Picaxe 20x2 and Printer Parallel

P

phoenix70

New Member
Hola amigos, saludos, no tengo problemas para imprimir hacia una ipresora serial, pero como deberia manejar las salidas paa una impresora puerto paralelo ?, tipo centronics, alguien me puede dar un ejemplo o algun link ?, eh buscado por san google, pero nada concreto, se los sabria agradecer.

Hello friends, greetings, I have no problems printing to a serial printer, but as it should handle the output to a printer parallel port?, Centronics, someone can give me an example or some link?, Eh sought by St. google, but nothing Specifically, the sabria appreciated.
 
hippy

hippy

Ex-Staff (retired)
In theory it should be similar to and as simple as driving an LCD in 8-bit parallel mode.

The PICAXE would likely wait for Busy from the printer to be low, put out byte data on 8 lines then pulse the Strobe line low, wait for Ack from the printer to pulse low, and repeat.

There are other lines to the printer which may need pulling high or low or placed under software control; Init, AutoFd, SelectIn. I don't know if Init has to be pulsed low prior to starting printing.

Additional lines coming from the printer are; Fault, Error and SelectOut.
 
P

papaof2

Senior Member
phoenix70 said:
Hello friends, greetings, I have no problems printing to a serial printer, but as it should handle the output to a printer parallel port?, Centronics, someone can give me an example or some link?, Eh sought by St. google, but nothing Specifically, the sabria appreciated.
Click to expand...
The FRM015 is a chip that does the serial to parallel conversion (and some minimal operation checks). You will need to adda 4 MHz resonator to the FRM015 and that you will have to build the circuit and add a DB25 connector to accept the plug on the standard parallel printer cable. You will then be able to send text (no graphics) from the PICAXE to a parallel printer.

You must also "wake up" the FRM015 chip before sending text to it and you should "shut down" the chip when printing is finished (the datasheet has the codes needed).

Remember that Windows-only printers will NOT work - only a printer that accepts ASCII characters and works with DOS: the ancient HP 500 inkjet will work fine - if you can find one - as will most older dot-matrix printers.

It's been a long time since I wrote a parallel printer driver; for a Sinclair ZX80, in assembly language, with a look-up table for the odd character map the ZX80 used.

John
 
Last edited:
W

westaust55

Moderator
eclectic said:
Please see

http://81.134.141.187/epages/Store.storefront/?ObjectPath=/Shops/Store.TechSupplies/Products/FRM015

http://www.rev-ed.co.uk/docs/frm015.pdf
Click to expand...

Good find or memory there eclectic.
The Rev Ed Firmware chips are very poorly advertised.

PICAXE manual Part 3 makes reference to LCD Firmware with reference back to the Rev Ed website but does not specifically mention the FRM010 chip.

There is absolutely no reference to the existence of the serial to parallel printer firmware chip in the manuals.

The list of datasheets at:
http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/datasheets.htm
lists neither the FRM010 or FRM015 chips.

Maybe Rev Ed can consider adding a little more to the manual part 3 to identify these cjhips and add them to the datsheest listing at the page mentioned above.


@Phoenix,
Please note that you have posted in the finished/ completed projects section of the forum.
While some forum members do look here, you may get more and faster responses by posting questions in the active forum area located at: http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=2
 
J

Janne

Senior Member
hippy said:
In theory it should be similar to and as simple as driving an LCD in 8-bit parallel mode.
Click to expand...
It indeed is, at least with some printers. I used to have a 2x20LCD in my computer's printer port, that I used to display the song currently being played in the mp3 player software. If I forgot the printer in the LPT port instead of the lcd, it would just print the song name in the paper :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top