SATO 10e Bi-Directional Communications, Enquire/Ack/Nak, Stream Identification, Cancel Can

Section 3: Interface Specifications

BI-DIRECTIONAL COMMUNICATIONS

This is a two-way communications protocol between the host computer and the printer, thus enabling the host to check printer status. When Bi-Com 4 communications is selected, there is no busy signal from the printer. The host must request the complete status from the printer, including ready/busy. The host may request status in two different ways.

ENQUIRE/ACK/NAK

In the Bi-Com 4 mode, the host transmits an ENQ (05 hexadecimal) to the printer and the printer will respond with its status within five milliseconds. If printing, it will respond upon finishing the current label, then resume printing. In order for this protocol to work properly with an RS232C Optional Interface, pin 6 (DTR) and pin 5 (CTS) must be held high by the host. One way to ensure these pins are always in the correct state is to tie pin 20 (DTR) to pin 6 (DSR) and pin 4 (RTS) to pin 5 (CTS) at the printer end of the cable.

ENQUIRE (ENQ)

Upon receipt of an ENQ command, the printer responds with 25 bytes of status information bounded by an STX/ETX pair. The Bi-Com protocol works only in the multiple job buffer mode. The status information is defined as follows:

<STX>{ 2 Byte ID}{1 Status Byte}{6 Byte Label Remaining}{16 Byte Job Name}<ETX>

	STREAM IDENTIFICATION
ID		Is a two byte number identifying the current print job ID. The print
		job ID is defined using the <ESC>ID Job ID command transmitted
		with the print job (see Job ID Store in the command listing for
		more information on how to use this command). The range is
		from 00 to 99.
Status		A single byte defining the current status of the printer (see the
		Status Byte Definition table).
Label Remaining		Six bytes defining the number of labels remaining in the current
		print job. The range is from 000000 to 999999 labels.
Job Name		16 bytes of ASCII characters identifying the name assigned to the
		job by the <ESC>WK Job Name command. If the Job Name is
		less than 16 characters, the field will be padded with leading
		zeroes.
		If an ENQ is received after the print job specified in the ID bytes
		has been completed, or there is no data in the buffer, the printer
		will respond with two “space” characters (20 hexadecimal) for the
		ID number, six “zero” characters (30 hexadecimal) in the
		Remaining Labels bytes and the 16 byte Job Name.

CANCEL (CAN)

If a CAN (18 hexadecimal) command is received , it will stop the print job and clear all data from the receive and print buffers. A delay of five milliseconds or more is required before any new data can be downloaded. The CAN command is effective immediately upon receipt, even if the printer is off-line or in an error condition. The printer will return an ACK (06 hexadecimal) if there is no printer error condition and a NAK (15 hexadecimal) if an error condition exists.

SATO M10e Service Manual PN 9001113A Page 3-7