Local Area Network (Lan) Interface; Bi-Directional Communications - SATO CL608e Operator's Manual

Section 6. Interface Specifications
LOCAL AREA NETWORK (LAN) OPTIONAL INTERFACE
A Local Area Network (LAN) interface is a Plug-In Interface Module that can be
installed by the user. It requires a driver shipped with each printer that has the
interface installed. The driver that must be loaded on your PC and the PC must be
configured to support the TCP/IP network protocol using a 10/100BaseT LAN
connection. Details for loading the LAN driver are contained in the LAN Interface
Manual that is shipped with each printer with a LAN Optional interface installed.

BI-DIRECTIONAL COMMUNICATIONS

This is a two-way communications protocol between the host computer and the
printer, thus enabling the host to check printer status. When Bi-Com 4
communications is selected, there is no busy signal from the printer. The host must
request the complete status from the printer, including ready/busy. The host may
request status in two different ways.
ENQUIRE/ACK/NAK
In the Bi-Com 4 mode, the host transmits an ENQ (05 hexadecimal) to the printer
and the printer will respond with its status within five milliseconds. If printing, it will
respond upon finishing the current label, then resume printing. In order for this
protocol to work properly with an RS232 Optional Interface, pin 6 (DTR) and pin 5
(CTS) must be held high by the host. One way to ensure these pins are always in the
correct state is to tie pin 20 (DTR) to pin 6 (DSR) and pin 4 (RTS) to pin 5 (CTS) at
the printer end of the cable.
Enquire (ENQ)
Upon receipt of an ENQ command, the printer responds with 25 bytes of status
information bounded by an STX/ETX pair. The Bi-Com protocol works only in the
Multi Job Buffer mode. The status information is defined as follows:
<STX>{ 2 Byte ID}{1 Status Byte}{6 Byte Label Remaining}{16 Byte Job Name}<ETX>
ID - This is a two byte number identifying the current print job ID. The print
job ID is defined using the <ESC>ID Job ID command transmitted with the
print job (see Job ID Store in the command listing for more information on
how to use this command). The range is from 00 to 99.
Status - A single byte defining the current status of the printer (see the Status
Byte Definition table).
Label Remaining - Six bytes defining the number of labels remaining in the
current print job. The range is from 000000 to 999999 labels.
Job Name - 16 bytes of ASCII characters identifying the name assigned to
the job by the <ESC>WK Job Name command. If the Job Name is less than
16 characters, the field will be padded with leading zeroes.
If an ENQ is received after the print job specified in the ID bytes has been completed,
or there is no data in the buffer, the printer will respond with two "space" characters
Page 6-8 PN 9001074 Rev. B SATO CL Series "e" Printers