SATO D512, D508 service manual Using the IEEE1284 Parallel Interface CONT’D

SECTION 6: TROUBLESHOOTING

6.2 USING THE IEEE1284 (PARALLEL) INTERFACE (CONT’D)

Observations

This may mean that the computer doesn’t know the printer is there. Verify that:

a.Both ends of the cable are securely inserted into their respective connectors

b The printer is ON LINE

c.The cable is not defective. There are other things that can cause this error message on your computer, but at this stage, a defective cable may be one of the reasons

6.When you send the print job to the printer and it does not respond, and there is no error mes- sage on the PC:

A.Check your data stream to make sure it com- plies with standard SATO commands.

B.Verify that you’ve included all required parame- ters in the data stream.

C.Verify the following:

•You have not typed a “0” (zero) for an “O” (letter) or vice-versa.

•You have not missed any SPBL commands/ headers where they’re needed.

•Make sure all printer command codes are capital letters.

7.If you’ve checked all of the above and the printer still isn’t printing, you may want to try a Receive Buffer DATA Dump to determine what (if anything) the printer is receiving from your computer. To print DATA Dumps see page 3-11,Configura- tion and Operation.

The parallel port is now listening for incoming data. Send your print job. The printer will now print (only once) a DATA Dump of everything it received from the host computer. Each 2-digit hexadecimal character represents a character the printer received. It may be tedious, but now you can analyze and troubleshoot the data stream.

8.While checking the DATA Dump printout, look out for the sequence 0D 0A, which is a combination of Carriage Return and Line Feed characters. The command string should be continuous, and you should not see CR or LF characters between the SBPL commands.

Page 6-2 SATO D508/D512 Operator Manual