Chapter 5 Troubleshooting Common Situations
Troubleshooting Common Situations
Occasionally, situations occur that require some troubleshooting skill. Possible problem situations and potential solutions are listed in this section. While not every conceivable situation is addressed here, you may find some of these tips helpful. Contact a qualified service technician for problems that persist or are not covered in this section.
Improving Processing Time
Before looking at solutions for decreasing processing time and increasing throughput, it may help to understand what happens during processing. When the printer receives a format command, it enters the label formatting mode. Label formatting requires time to process the label data into the printer buffers.
The time required varies, depending on the complexity of the label format and on the size of the area being printed. Once the data has been mapped into memory, the printer will start printing as many labels as requested by the quantity command. In most cases, there is no delay between labels; however, there are certain situations that may cause delays between label printing:
•Using the cutter option:
The printer must stop and wait for the cutter to execute the cutting cycle.
•Using Automatic Label
The printer stops between each label and waits for the label to be removed.
Data Exchange
Many things can cause data loss or communications problems. This section suggests some ways to isolate these problems and determine their cause.
Handshaking
Handshaking is the exchange of signals between two computers (or a computer and a peripheral input or output device) to indicate the status of the data being transferred. In the serial mode, the printer uses both hardware and software handshaking and transmits both forms simultaneously when the input buffer is full.
The printer can be used with either serial or parallel host interfaces. Parallel interfaces are usually straightforward, with no special settings required. Serial interfaces, however, have a variety of possible communication parameter settings. The two methods of handshaking that can be used, hardware and software, are explained below.
•Hardware Handshaking
These electrical signal are controlled by the logic states on pins 4 and 20 of the serial interface connector J2 (at the back of the printer).
The signals will go either low or high, depending on the configuration setting, when the printer is ready to receive data.
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