Windows Terminal Emulators

MickZA · November 2, 2006, 11:34am

I have been using NetTerm on various Windows flavors for a while and have just run into a problem with printer passthru (transparent printing) that I can analyse but not resolve.

The setup is a Epson TM60 POS Label Printer connected XON/XOFF via COM1 on a Win98SE system. This is controlled utilising ESC/POS commands to produce barcodes.

The problem is that the ALL the NUL codes (ASCII 00) in the commands are dropped before they get to the printer ie:

*set printable area motion units in page mode
move x"1B570000000070019F00" to tm60-line
write tm60-line no control.

results in 1B5770019F at the sticky end of TCP/IP, Windows, NetTerm, printer.

NetTerm is configured to print direct to the port (not using the windows driver/spooler) so my query is - WHAT IS STEALING THE NULS ??? -

BTW If I hang the TM60 off a RS232 port on the Server there are no probs.
The problem is not hardware related - several printers, Win systems tested.

Any thoughts anyone???

Perderabo · November 2, 2006, 12:00pm

I have never used netterm but I found this:

The NetTerm option to "print directly to printer" was put into NetTerm in
the days of Windows 3.1 when it was acceptable to bypass all of the Windows
printer drivers, and allow a host application to access the printer direct.
This option is still available, since many Windows 3.1 systems still exist.

However, on newer Windows operating systems, this option should not be used.
You should select the "send to windows printer" option to send normal text
files. This option will utilize the normal Windows printer driver for your
selected printer.

For those host applications that require direct access to the printer, use
the option "send to windows print queue". This does bypass the Windows
driver, and does require the host application to completely control the
printer. However it is the preferred way to bypass the Windows printer
drivers.

MickZA · November 2, 2006, 1:02pm

Nope - No joy.

As I say the problem is the stripping of the NULs, I have seen these replaced with CR's LF,s etc in the past due to protocol considerations (7 bit 8 bit etc) and know that NULs are favorite targets for compression techniques (along with spaces) but these are often single NULs. Telnet is a suspect but I can find no direct reference to this problem besides I'm pretty sure termcap/terminfo must use NULs.

I have tested with VT100, sco-ansi & wy50 emulations with no difference in outcome - Netterm has the option to capture the print data to file so I have no trouble running a hex editor on it and as I say NOT a NUL in sight!!.

Thx for the ref I will fire this off to netterm support & see what they say.

MickZA · November 3, 2006, 1:59am

Quick turn around from Netterm support:

Working like a charm!!! Interestingly I then googled on "tpbinary" and came across a doc on the first page here

which whilst it does not address the problem would have put me on the track.

BTW this option is not mentioned in any of the documentation contained in the downloaded versions - still alls well that ends well

PS: you do not need to download the latest (licensed) version it is working fine on the old freeware release