IBM 4400 manual Serial Matrix Printer Protocol

4 Serial Matrix Printer

Protocol

Introduction

This chapter describes the Serial Matrix emulation host control codes. “Emulation” refers to the ability of a printer to execute the commands of a particular printer control language. A printer control language is the coding system used to convey, manipulate, and print data. Carriage Return, print quality, character attributes such as bold and underline, margins, and tabs are typical functions selected by printer control language codes. In this manual, the terms emulation, printer protocol, and printer control language are synonymous.

The Serial Matrix emulation is very similar to the code system used by an IBM Graphics Printer, but contains more features. This emulation enables your line matrix printer to print files coded for a serial matrix printer. To select the Serial Matrix emulation mode as the active printer emulation, select ASCII Emulation from the EMULATION menu and Serial Matrix from the Printer Protocol menu, as described in the User's Guide.

The Serial Matrix emulation provides many configurable parameters. The default parameter values for this emulation are shown in Table 16. You can modify the emulation parameter values in two ways:

•The Serial Matrix host control codes. An extensive set of Serial Matrix control code commands can be sent to the printer from an attached host computer via the host data stream. Most of this chapter is devoted to describing the Serial Matrix control codes.

•The printer configuration menus. You can modify a subset of the Serial Matrix emulation parameters using the control panel keys and LCD display, as described in the User's Guide.

Control codes sent from a host system generally override previous settings that result from the configuration menus.

NOTE: Configuration values selected from the menus or via host control codes can be saved to the printer's NVRAM memory so that they will not be lost when you power off the printer or reset it to the factory default configuration. The menu selection for saving a configuration to memory is described in the User's Guide.To save the configuration using host control codes, refer to Appendix B, “PTR_SETUP Option”.

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