Intermate i5, AS/400 manual Appendix B Attaching Printers to the iSeries, Attachment Methods

Appendix B - Attaching Printers to the iSeries

This chapter provides information on how to configure the physical attachment of HP compatible Laser printers to your AS/400 network.

Note: Below it is proposed to change the system value, QAUTOCFG. This change may cause problems in certain rare setups. Remember always to have the approval of your AS/400 responsible before changing any system value.

Attachment Methods

Most modern laser printers are designed for operation with an MS-Windows platform and is equipped with a Parallel Centronics port. Most of these printers understands HP-PCL5 which is an ASCII based print language. In order for the printer to operate on the AS/400 a physical and logical protocol conversion must be used.

The attachment of printers can be made by any of the following methods:

!Twinax to Centronics protocol converter (5219/3812 SCS compatible)

!Printer port of a 5250 Terminal

!Printer port of a PC with AS/400 printer session capabilities (ASCII transparency compatible)

!Internal or external LAN Print Server supporting TCP/IP LPD, TN5250E or Lexlink (Lexlink connection is not explained in this manual)

!Other attachment which can print through a server receiving ASCII print data from the AS/400.

InterForm400® contains an EBCDIC to ASCII conversion program. When using the interface types ASCII850 and ASCIIR8 in InterForm400® this protocol conversion program is used for spool data as well. The following sections describe attachment of printers using the interface types ASCII850 and ASCIIR8.

Attaching through a Twinax Protocol Converter

The printer can be attached through any protocol converter emulating an IBM SCS printer and which understands the ASCII transparency SCS command (03h). This command is a standard feature according to the 5250 attachment standard, and should be supported by most interfaces emulating 5219 or 3812.

The interface should preferably be configured to the system as 3812 model 1 SCS Printer device. If another SCS device description (eg. 4214) is specified enabling host print transform will allow ASCII transparency to be sent to this device as well. Refer to section

Attaching through a 5250 Terminal.

System Configuration by Auto Configuration

The easiest way to create the device description for the protocol converter is using Auto Configuration.

1.Enable Auto Configuration with the following CL command.

CHGSYSVAL SYSVAL(QAUTOCFG) VALUE(‘1')

User’s Manual for InterForm400® 365