Printing

[Samj]

I've got a POS receipt printer installed on the ESD_LPT1 port of my WinXP computer. With a lot of outside help I managed to get a Progress program using API's to print receipts to this printer. Now I want to share this printer and let other PC's print receipts there too.

The problem I am having is that when another computer tries to print to this printer, DocumentPropertiesA returns -1 when it attempts to get the device mode and then I can't get a handle to the printer.

I'm stuck...again. Any ideas?

TIA

Sam

 

[tdi]

esd_lpt1?

Hi there!

Besides sharing your printer on the network, what about to share what you've done?
What's esd_lpt1? Is it an USB port?.
On the other side, the remote client, uses print spool?
I've had something like that with a Lexmark printer, and it used a "PrintJet print processor" and changed to winprint and somethigs were fixed, but other arised...
Do you use -Wa -wpp on the startup?
Which way u use to send the print-out on the local machine?
Any insight on the config you have, perhaps it will help to figure out what you can try....

I would like very much to share with you info, cause i work mostly with pos printers, scanners, collectors and all that...

Hope to hear soon from you...

Octavio Olguin
Mexico.

 

[Samj]

Hi

Well, I'm not sure about everything you've asked about, but I'll try to give you some more info.

The ESD_LPT1 port is the parallel port on my PC. Shared the printer, spool print documents, print immediately and bidirectional.

I downloaded a driver from Epson, the printer is a model# TM-U325, and it installed the printer(s) as a Windows printer. One printer installed twice, once as a receipt printer and once as a validation printer.

We decided not to use an OCX to try and keep things generic so customers could buy the brands of printers they want. So we're using windows drivers and API calls. I output an ascii text file to disk and then read it in one line at a time.

The printer also has to endorse checks, when tendered, and kick out the cash drawer. I was able to do all of this with one program (modified version of printfile.p from global-shared.com). I thought I was going to have to use -Wa -wpp startup parameters in order to send the control sequence to kick out the drawer but the printer has a control font I was able to access through the Progress program and send the control sequence through it. I know, it's not generic now. But that's something I'll have to work on later.

In Win9x you could capture the port of the machine that is sharing the printer. I was told that this is probably what I needed to do. But, I don't see that option with XP when adding a network printer.

Sam