(c) 1990, 1991 Wolf Faust Am Dorfgarten 10 W-6000 Frankfurt 50 Germany voice ++49-69-5486556 (GMT) Fido 2:243/43.5 (Wild Cat: ++49-6173-2544 HST,V.32bis) UUCP:cbmvax.commodore.com!cbmehq!cbmger!venus!wfaust Author's request ---------------- The entire driver package may be noncommercially redistributed, provided that the package is always distributed in its complete form. A small copy fee for media costs is allowed but any kind of commercial distribution is strictly forbidden! The author and any other distributor takes no responsibility for the consequences of its use. This driver package is shareware. You may feel free to use it without any charge. Anyway I ask you to donate some bucks (10$, that's 2,3% of my income as student ;-). There is much room left for further improvements, but without your support there may be no future revisions! So it's on you! You can allways get the latest version for free through the above given FIDO/UUCP addresses or send me a selfaddressed letter and $10. Files you must get with this readme: Nec24Plus - Driver Readme - This textfile History ------- 07.01.91 Version 35 Rev 1 20.01.91 Version 35 Rev 2 - small corrections for text dumps 04.03.91 Version 35 Rev 4 - now support ESC-$ for graphic dumps - smaller changes in the char translation table 15.05.91 Version 35 Rev 5 - after selecting 360YDPI, no <360YDPI mode won't work anymore, because NumRows doesn't got reseted. fixed 27.08.91 Version 35 Rev 5.1 - joined drivers: 68000+68020 version in one driver! (no more preference switching for turboboard users ;-) - Kickstart 2 version string added - more textformat commands added Description: ------------ This driver is intended for all those Nec compatible dot matrix printers out there. The driver is up to 2000% faster compared to the commodore Nec_Pinwriter driver. Also new features are supported by this driver. Nec24Plus (24-pin Nec compatible) ----------------------------------- 1. Dot matrix b&w/color printer (text and graphics). 2. Drives all Nec compatible printers (i.e. Nec P5200/P6/P7/P6+...). 3. Linefeeds # of vertical dots printed. 4. Density XDPI YDPI XYDPI Comments 1 90 180 16200 2 120 180 21600 3 180 180 32400 4 120 360 43200 two pass 5 180 360 64800 two pass 6 360 180 64800 *1 7 360 360 129600 two pass *1 5. A PaperSize of 'Wide Tractor' selects a maximum print width of 13.6 inches (for wide carriage printers). 6. A papertype of 'SINGLE' ejects the sheet with a formfeed after every dump. This enables the sheet cutting feature. Formfeed after a graphic dump is send according to the SPECIAL_NOFORMFEED flag. Improvements added (compared to Nec_Pinwriter) ------------------ 1. The driver has been speeded up. Now it's much faster than a standard WB driver. 2. Users which previously used the Nec24Plus driver might search for the ".020" turbo version of the driver. Thanks to special code done in this driver, the driver automaticly makes use of the improved features of 68020/30/40 processors. There is absolutly no more need for a "turbo" version of the driver, because everything is built in. During initialisation, the driver finds out wich type of processor is currently used. If it is run on an improved processer (i.e. 68020,68030 or 68040), it uses the optimised turbo routines. These routines take care of new instructions and performance increase by using the processor cache. 3. Timeout is now set according to the preference settings. How "timeout" is calculated: b&w or grey + 180YDPI = 20 seconds b&w or grey + 360YDPI = 40 seconds color + 180YDPI = 30 seconds color + 360YDPI = 60 seconds Commo's Nec_Pinwriter driver = allways 30 seconds 4. There is now support for selecting different typefaces. Due to the extended character translation table, the character set selection commands (aFNT0 - aFNT10) are no longer really needed, so selecting font cards with aFNT0 - aFNT10 (FS-C-n) is recommended. (PS: Excellence users watch out! These commands cause sleepless nights ;-) 5. The driver now uses ESC-$ (abs. horiz. position) to advance the printerhead over white areas while doing graphic dumps. This results in a great speed improvement because less data must be send to the printer. Please note: this method might not be suitable to your printer and in case your printer gets ugly slow: this is not your driver. Use the "test" script to find out if your printer handles ESC-$ right with this driver. Special things to note ---------------------- After my first release of an EpsonLQ compatible printer driver I got many letters from people asking for an unsupported printer driver. Please: 1. include some money if you wan't to get answered. Postage takes a major part of my income (as student I have no real income :-( ) 2. in case you found a bug: please give me a full description or better: an example image/printout. In most cases I can't verify your statements without example! 3. if you wan't some improvements or you have wishes: drop me a note, 4. if you don't have a driver for your printer or your driver doesn't fully support your printer: drop me a note with a description of your printer and maybe I'll do this for you... (if you don't want to wait for an answer: send me a copy of your manual. But remember: there is no guarantee I'll do the job!) 5. please note: this driver is specialy written for Nec printers. Some other printers maybe compatible with the Nec commands, but differ in speed. Because of this, there might be a requester asking you to check your printer cable. In this case you can ignore the requester. Also, your printer might be using FS-3 to advance the paper n/360 on graphic dumps. This does not(!) mean, your printer is Nec compatible. This driver makes much use of Nec's FS commands which are most likely unknown to your printer! If possible, you should prefer one of the ESC-+ drivers. Notes ----- *1 - in this mode most printers cannot print two consecutive dots in a row. It is recommended that you only use this density for B&W Shade dumps. -- PS: english is not my native language, so don't call me names... --