#A500 Printer Setup
12 messages in this thread
A friend of mine has an Amiga 500 system, and I have loaned him an Epson
printer (I believe it's an LX-70) to connect to it. He's got the printer
connected to his parallel port, and when he boots the system, the printer does
it's normal initialization thing, which suggests that the the connection
between the parallel port and the printer is OK. However, when he attempts to
print anything, he gets a message stating that the printer is not ready, and to
check connections and cables.
I'm not an Amiga user, so I'm not in a very good position to offer advice to
him, which is why I'm here. Does anyone have any ideas of what he should look
for? Are there any things that he needs to do to configure or define the
printer to his system, or to route his printer output to his parallel port?
(Those are some of the things I'd look for if this had happened on an IBM
system, which I'm familiar with.)
Any help would be gratefully appreciated. Thanks!
gcb
Have your friend check to see that he has selected the correct printer
driver from his SYSTEM:PREFERENCES/PRINTER drawer. I believe he should be
using the EPSONX driver.
I spoke with my friend this morning and read him the text of the message. We
appreciate the help, but, alas, he's still getting the "check printer cable"
message.
Would you have any suggestions as to how to diagnose the problem? He believes
that the parallel port itself and the cable to the printer are both OK, because
the printer does it's little "wake up" during the boot sequence, suggesting
that it's receiving signals from the Amiga.
I do appreciate your help and prompt response!
gcb
All I can suggest is to have him try the EpsonXOld driver from
preferences, and if that fails, try a new parallel cable (I've had bad
ones, so it is not uncommon). Are you sure that the printer is coming up
'ONLINE'?
Thanks for the tips. I'm not sure if the printer is coming up ONLINE; how can
he check this? (I'm not an Amiga type person myself, but since I have access
to CompuServe and he doesn't, currently, I've volunteered to act as his
intermediary.)
Thanks again for your help.
gcb
>>>I'm not sure if the printer is coming up ONLINE; how can he check
this?<<<
GC:
This has nothing to do with the Amiga, it has to do with the status of the
printer. Some printers power up in OFFLINE mode, some in ONLINE mode. Some
will power up to ONLINE but immediately switch to OFFLINE status if their
is no paper loaded.
There should be a button and LED on the control panel of the printer that
says ONLINE… when the printer is offline, the indicator LED will not be
lighted. Simply depress the button to bring the printer ONLINE.
Thanks for the suggestion. This is the first thing that was looked at. The
printer is ONLINE.
Thanks, gcb
Your friend needs a printer driver for that particular printer, and it
needs to be in DEVS:PRINTERS on his Workbench. The drivers usually come
on the Extras: disk in a directory called DEVS:PRINTERS, and the right one
only needs to be copied over to the Workbench.
—Betty
I spoke with my friend this morning and read him the text of your message. He's
tried it, but unfortunately is still getting the "check printer cable" message.
At this point, he's kind of at a loss, and I'm not much help, because my
experience is in the IBM PC – MS DOS arena, not with Amigas.
We do figure that the parallel port itself is OK and that the cable connection
is good, because the printer does it's little "wake up" jerk when the system is
booted. Other than moving the printer driver, is there anything else that you
can think of that he might have to do? My total ignorance of Amigas and
AmigaDOS may be showing, but is there any need to logically connect print
output to the parallel port, or something like that? Any other thoughts – or
possible ways to help further diagnose the problem?
I do really appreciate your help and your prompt response.
Thanks!
gcb
I cannot think of anything that would cause that particular message. Is
your friend trying to print directly from the screen or from a file, or
from some program? That message is one that I've seen often enough. It
can come when the printer is offline, or from several other causes – most
anything that is preventing the data from flowing to the printer.
Can he print with a simple command? Have him try this.
RUN ED: RAM:TEST
Then, in the ED window, type something short like "This is a printer
test." Save it by hitting ESC and X.
Then, from the CLI command line, type
TYPE >PRT: RAM:TEST
That ought to get a response from the printer. If you did
TYPE >PAR: RAM:TEST, you would get something on the printer, but it
would be an error message.
If he cannot get either of these to get a response of any kind, I'm kind
of out of ideas and someone else needs to jump in here and help us!
—Betty
Make _sure_ you are using a 'full' printer cable. Many PC compatables
don't look at all the status lines from a printer, and therefore will talk
with an incoplete cable. The Amiga actually checks all the status lines.
This is a good suggestion. I've passed the suggestion along, and he's going to
check out the cable to make sure it's full. The cable he's using is the one I
used to connect the printer to my Epson PC…
Thanks!
gcb