RetroPrinter Support

Hi,

The Oric / Atmos has a relatively simple Centronics port - only caveat with the retroprinter is to leave pin 23 (and possibly 24) on the centronics side disconnected (do not connect to ground!).

Attached is the output of a simple test that combines bitmap graphics (a little disk icon) with text (the listing that produces the image) on an emulated Epson.

LPRINT CHR$(27);"+";CHR$(48) --> sets the line spacing for 24 pins
LPRINT CHR$(27);"*;CHR$(0);CHR$(14);CHR$(0); --> switches to graphics mode, with the printer expecting 14 columns of graphic data. Note that this command needs to be sent at the start of each line. Otherwise the printer will revert to text mode.

the rest of the program reads the data and sends it to the printer. -1 indicates the end of the line (and prints a CR/LF). -2 is the end of the data and finishes up by printing another CR/LF (and then sends the Listing to the printer).

Thanks to Rich for helping to figure out that I needed the Epson ESC/P escape codes rather than those for the older MX/FX ones

Glad to see this is working - working with Flip to help overcome his issues - it seems the main reason for the graphics printing (ESC K command) failing to work properly was a typo in the webpage he was looking at. The FX-80 Users Guide (which provides lots of useful programming examples actually), does indeed use the ESC K command for each line of graphics - see page 150 onwards. The website Flip was using was trying to use the ESC K command to print one line of 15 x 8 pixels in graphics mode, and then simply send a CR, LF character and send another 15 x 8 pixels without repeating the ESC K command.

The later ESC .1, ESC .2 and ESC .3 commands can do this, but none of the earlier graphics commands so far as I am aware.

The pin 23 / 24 issue is the fault on the v3 PCB getting in the way!