Laser Printer for PanelView

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Thread Starter

ScienceOfficer

Has anyone connected a laser printer to a PanelView lately?

Don't bother emailing any jokes about whether anyone has EVER hooked up alaser printer to a PanelView, we used them all up during the first hour after the request. I think the end user is just trying to get a laser printer, period.

Nonetheless, I am looking for a laser printer that is currently available new that supports FX-80 emulation. For extra points, it will have a
serial interface without my adding an external accessory.

I have found a few leads online, but I'm hoping for a recommendation from someone's experience. The jobsite is far away, and we only get one free
shot at this.

Larry Lawver
Rexel / Central Florida
 
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Curt Wuollet

Look at panasonic laser printers. I seem to recall having one with an Epson emulation a few years ago.

Regards

cww
 
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ScienceOfficer

Curt nailed my best lead so far, and if I don't find a better answer I am in fact going to try a Panasonic.

Thanks to all,

Larry
 
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Michael Batchelor

This might be tough. The problem is letting the printer know when to eject the page. I suppose one could press the eject button, but that would get old fast. You might wait until the line buffer fills up, but then you might have to wait a long time between when you print and when the page eject occurs. (Unless of course there is a LOT of stuff going to the printer pretty regularly.)

On the offhand chance you have control of the stings going to the printer you could just make sure the string is formatted with a page eject command after the last character. I've never tried it, but I could imagine it.

Figure out the ascii string for the page eject (try formfeed), stuff it into a string file (or integer register depending on your PLC) and just
make sure it's the last character in whatever you're spitting out the printer port on the PV. Then the printer would print and eject the page
after the text is formatted.

Most non-host-based (read non-windows only) laser printers have a default font that will get amazingly close to FX-80 character set. You probably couldn't get FX-80 graphics without more work than it's worth, but if you're only looking for alarm messages or something like that then who
cares about graphics?
 
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