Parallel port/NT4.0/Serial drivers

[L. Ravi Narasimhan]

I have a small parallel printer from Extech that is suitable for printing
receipt-style tapes. It takes data readily from W98; ie. I can redirect a
directory listing from an MS DOS window within W98 and it will print.

I am attempting to get this unit to work with LV5.1.1 under
NT4.0/SP6. Per the Knowledge Base, I have added a line to labview.ini
such that LPT1: is the tenth or eleventh item in the COM port list.

serialDevices="COM1;COM2;COM3;COM4;COM5;COM6;COM7;COM8;COM9;LPT1;LPT2;LPT3;LPT4;"

I then try to send characters to the printers through the serial write
using ports nine or ten as required. The NT Printer handler returns an error
message. Explicitly closing the serial port and using the buffer
flush routin
es in _sersup.llb does not resolve the problem.

The same code fragment under W98 hangs the system somewhere in the
Write to serial port VI.

Since the printer works under W98 and since I know the parallel port on the NT
machine is good (HP Printer normally hooked up works fine) I am
interested in knowing what else to try. The goal is to have this work
under NT as the W98 machine will not be used for data acquisition in
the final analysis.

Thanks,

--- Ravi




---
Ravi Narasimhan
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA
http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~oski

[Alex]

[posted and mailed]

oski@planck.physics.ucla.edu (L. Ravi Narasimhan) wrote in
:

>I have a small parallel printer from Extech that is suitable for
>printing receipt-style tapes. It takes data readily from W98; ie. I can
>redirect a directory listing from an MS DOS window within W98 and it
>will print.
>
>I am attempting to get this unit to work with LV5.1.1 under
>NT4.0/SP6. Per the Knowledge Base, I have added a line to labview.ini
>such that LPT1: is the tenth or eleventh item in the COM port list.
>
>serialDevices="COM1;COM2;COM3;COM4;COM5;COM6;COM7;COM8;COM9;LPT1;LPT2;LPT
>3;LPT4;"
>
>I then try to send characters to the printers through the serial write
>using ports nine or ten as required. The NT Printer handler
returns an
>error message. Explicitly closing the serial port and using the buffer
>flush routines in _sersup.llb does not resolve the problem.
>
>The same code fragment under W98 hangs the system somewhere in the
>Write to serial port VI.
>
>Since the printer works under W98 and since I know the parallel port on
>the NT machine is good (HP Printer normally hooked up works fine) I am
>interested in knowing what else to try. The goal is to have this work
>under NT as the W98 machine will not be used for data acquisition in
>the final analysis.
>

Might make a difference, but my string is:

serialDevices="COM1;COM2;COM3;COM4;COM5;COM6;COM7;COM8;COM9;\\.\COM10;LPT1;
LPT2;LPT3;LPT4"
and then acces LPT1 usng port=10

This works under NT and WinX, although I have also installed the printer
drivers for the lineprinter (may or maynot be important.

cheers, Alex


--

Alexander C. Le Dain, PhD
ICON Technologies Pty Ltd
http://www.icon-tech.com.au

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