TransAct Ithaca 280, Programmer'S Manual

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Communications iTherm
®
280 Programmer’s Guide
Page 274 Rev K
USB
USB stands for Universal Serial Bus. It was originally conceived in the early 90‘s and
officially recognized by Compaq, Intel, Microsoft and NEC. The development of USB
has been slow, however, with the release of Windows 95 SR2 development accelerated.
Windows 2000 now fully supports USB as do Windows 98 SE, and Windows Me. A
technical discussion of USB is beyond the scope of this document. If you would like
more information about USB, visit the USB web site at
www.usb.org .
USB Support
POS printers are different from typical Windows printers in several ways. Microsoft has
recognized these differences and has been working with the USB Device Working Group
to generate a set of standards that would abstract all point-of-sale devices at the
application level. At this time a workable standard for POS is years away. So while
Microsoft is interested in POS in the long term, Microsoft‘s immediate goal is to enable
POS USB devices a way that is compatible with existing service objects.
In order to support USB POS devices under the existing software architecture, Microsoft
is providing the POSUSB driver model to allow USB POS devices to interface as serial
COM ports to service object DLLs.
The Transact USB Printer interface is based on this Microsoft POSUSB driver model. It
provides full bi-directional interface to the printer and allows most existing applications to
interface to the USB Ithaca
®
iTherm
®
280 as if it were on a serial COM port. In addition
we have allowed the printer to register as a composite device. This allows the printer to
appear in the system as a USB print device as well as a COM port. If you are using a
windows printer driver (ours or the Generic driver) you can assign the printer to the USB
port.
We hope that supporting the USB Ithaca iTherm
®
280 as a composite device provides
the best of both worlds to our customer.
The USB Driver is available from customer support and by download from our web site.
Transact has written a POSPrinter.OCX ActiveX that will allow you to easily interface to
our printers. It is used by all of our demonstration programs. This OCX is available for
use with customer applications. It works with printers installed on Serial COM ports, LPT
ports, TCP/IP and USB. A USB compatible version is available from customer support
or from our web site.