Personal Computer News

22nd December 1984
QL Prints Out - No Problem

Categories: Letter

 
Author: Stephen Horn
Published in Personal Computer News #092

QL Prints Out - No Problem

The letters in the December 8 issue of PCN about connecting printers to the QL show up, among other things, the lamentable state of documentation which accompanies most computer products. I have just managed to get Brother's excellent little M-1009 printer working with my QL, but it was a constant struggle against incomplete, and sometimes wrong, information.

Anyway, here, in the hope that it will save others days of anguish and gnashing of teeth, is what I've discovered.

First the cable. Connect the pins as follows and use SER1 on the QL:

1. GROUND 7
2. TXD 2
3. RXD 3
4. BUSY 20
5. CTS (not used) 5
6. +12V 6

No other connections are needed. The vital piece of information missing from the QL handbook is that the numbering of the serial port pins starts at the end opposite the locking lever.

Now on to the dip switches. I've set them up as follows:

Switch 1:

1. OFF Busy polarity low
2. OFF X-No transmit (whatever that means)
3. ON }
4. ON } Baud rate
5. ON }
6. ON Parity ODD
7. OFF 8 bit work
8. OFF Serial input

Switch 2:

1. ON Form length 11"
2. ON }
3. OFF } English character set
4. OFF Selects 0
5. OFF Disables skip perforations
6. ON Not used, apparently
7. OFF Auto line feed
8. ON SLCTIN

A word of warning: there are mistakes in the baud rate table of the amended sheets for the printer, the ones in the original book are correct. Also, no-one tells you that it is necessary to switch off the printer and then on again after changing the dip switches; otherwise, the changes will not come into effect.

You should now be able to print using the default printer driver in Quill and get program listings by typing:

OPEN #3,SER [ENTER]
then
LIST #3 [ENTER]

The only problem is that the hash and pound signs don't come out properly.

Stephen Horn
Chanonmills, Edinburgh

Stephen Horn