SATO 400 Local Area Network LAN Optionalinterface, BI-DIRECTIONAL Communications, Enquire/Ack/Nak

Section 5. Interface Specifications

LOCAL AREA NETWORK (LAN) OPTIONALINTERFACE

A Local Area Network (LAN) interface is a factory installed interface option that must be specified at the time of order. When it is installed, the printer can be configured to receive data through the IEEE 1284 parallel interface or the optional LAN interface. It requires a driver (shipped with each printer that has the interface installed) that must be loaded on your PC and the PC must be configured to support the TCP/IP network protocol using a 10BaseT LAN connection. Details for loading the LAN driver are contained in the LAN Interface Manual that is shipped with each printer with a LAN Optional interface installed.

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 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 first mode, it 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 RS232 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 Multi 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>

ID - This 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.

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