25 Sep
2006
25 Sep
'06
4:32 p.m.
On 9/25/06, aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk <aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
Thanks for that, if no-one can help I'll look
out for that piece of kit on eBay and get
myself a laptop (I hate MS & Windoze)
I did some research before buying myself the
Labelwriter, and some guy (I forget his name)
has written a driver for a modern printer
so he could use it with his retro one.
He used software to intercept the data being
sent/recieved, rather than some equipment.
I also hooked up the Labelwriter to my Amiga
600, and used AMOS BASIC to try and get it
to print something by sending random data
(perhaps a bad idea) to it with no luck.
I did, however, confirm that the Amiga
recognised that the printer was connected.
There are software serial protocol analyzers that just monitor the
port. They are inferior to hardware protocol analyzers in that they
may hide or distort relative timing of requests/responses and flow
control signals. But they are certainly better than nothing, and may
be sufficient.
It is unlikely that you will be able to determine the protocol by
sending random data.
Sorry I can't be of more help. I have one of these label writers
too... I just punted and hooked it up to Windows in a VMWare session
rather than hooking it to Linux directly. I may be able to do some
traces for you if you're really desperate and cannot get the equipment
or documentation you need. I'm not sure if I have exactly the same
device but it should be 90% the same (Dymo Command Language).
-- John.