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8n
power on condition.
You can also set the printer to print in one direction for one
line only by using the (ESC) "(" command. This command im-
mediately
moves the printhead
to the left margin
and then
prints the remainder
of the line from left to right.
H The seven bit dilemma
Certain computers
(but not the IBM-PC fortunately!)
don't
have the capability to send eight bits on their parallel interface.
They can only send seven bits. This would make it impossible
for these
computers
to use this printer's
block
graphics
characters
and special symbols if our engineers
hadn't thought
of a solution. (All of these characters
have ASCII codes greater
than 127 which means that the eighth bit must be on to use
them.) The solution lies in the three control codes given in the
following table:
Table
7-4
Eighth bit controls
H Block graphics characters
and special symbols
Besides the upper and lower case letters and symbols that we
are by now familiar with, your printer has a whole different set
of characters that are for special uses. These characters include
block graphics for drawing forms and graphs, and special sym-
bols for mathematical,
engineering
and professional
uses. The
special characters
are included
in two character
sets. The
character
set you normally use is called character
set #l. The
special characters
are printed out when you send ASCII codes
160-255
to the printer.
Your printer also offers character
set #2 which is almost the
same as character set #1 except for the addition of ASCII codes
3-6,21,
and 128-159.
Character set #2 is selected with (ESC)
"6"; to go back to character
set #1, use (ESC)"7".
You can also specify the power-on default character set by set-
ting DIP switch l-5 on for character set #1 and off for character
set #2 while the DIP switch 2-2 is set on. The following program
will print out all of the graphics characters
available:
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