Allen-Bradley 1747-PBASE, Programming Manual

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Publication 1746-PM001A-US-P
7-4 Printing Your Program
Serial Printers
Some printers use serial communications, and some are equipped for both serial
and parallel. This section deals exclusively with serial printer configuration.
The BASIC Development Software supports both parallel and serial printers. The
port set-up of your personal computer determines which port on your personal
computer is the printer output port. Refer to the documentation provided with
your personal computer and printer for additional information on port set-up.
When printing to a serial printer, you must match the baud rate, parity, number of
data bits, and the number of stop bits of your serial port to the corresponding
parameters of your printer. One way of doing this is by using the DOS
Mode
command. For example:
mode COM2:9600,n,8,1
You can then use the DOS
Mode
command again to redirect printer output from
the LPT1 port to one of your serial communication ports. For example:
mode LPT1:=COM2:
If you do not want to redirect printer output, you can add a serial printer device to
the Print menu.
Path: Toplevel Menu
→ → → →
Edit mode
→ → → →
Print
QuickStroke: none
To specify a new printer device:
1. Select
printer Device/file
to access the
PRINTER DEVICE
dialog box.
2. Select
Create<Ins>
to enter a new printer device.
3. Enter the name of the serial communication port on your personal computer
that is to be the printer port, then press
[Enter]
.
For this example, you would type in:
COM2
The
PRINTER DEVICE
dialog box is displayed with the communication port
name you entered and is added to the top of the list of printer devices.
4. Highlight the port you named as the serial printer port and press
[Enter]
.
All printer output is sent to the serial port you specified.
IMPORTANT
The following examples use COM2 as the serial printer port.
Make sure the port you specify as the serial printer port is not
already being used as the mouse port or as the interface port to
the BASIC or BASIC-T module.