Printer problems ... serial connection needed

[Jerb]

I have a setup currently at the firehouse I work with which involves an old printer.

the 911 center, for lack of a better word, sends all the call info to a computer in the firehouse which prints to a serial printer which has stopped functioning.

my questions are these:

are there any affordable serial printers on the market? $300 or less but must be laser or toner based

or, I've seen many USB to serial adapters but they're all meant to go from the computers USB to the devices serial, can this be adapted to go from the computers serial to a more modern printers USB (or even parrallel?)

 

[Zepper]

Why not put a USB card in the computer or is it too old (OS too old) to support that? How about the software - is it hard wired to print to serial or is parallel a possibility? Need to know what the capabilities of the software are. Old DOS based software is often hard-programmed to the standard serial or parallel port addresses/IRQs (selectable options in the software itself) and one can have difficulties making it work with a modern printer. They may have to buy an update to the software to get it up to 1990s connectivity standards... I don't know why these places cling to ancient software/hardware for so long (but I guess I do it myself - I just went to XP from 2k...) Most recent Windows based software can work with USB as they can work to an ambiguous port. Serial to Parallel or vice versa adapters can be found and aren't too expensive. Going from USB printer to serial or parallel port is expensive because USB is a generalized bus and the others are mostly limited ports on the ISA bus. I know Epson and a few others still make some dot matrix printers that have parallel ports and often a serial port option card is available for them (often see those for cheap on fleaBay) or a serial to parallel adapter can be used. So is ribbon ink a suitable alternative to toner?

.bh.

 

[bruceb]

See link:

http://www.superwarehouse.com/...r_Printers/b/190/c/143

I would double check with the Okidata to be sure it is serial
before buying. Also, consider a parallel port printer. They are
somewhat easier to find. You may need a Serial to Parallel
adapter, if the program can not talk to a parallel port directly,
or if the computer does not have a parallel port. But to be
fair, it sounds like the FD needs to update the software as it
is way out of date. Perhaps even a small program to take the
Serial Printer data and convert it to USB format to send to the
printer.

Perhaps try this small interface to convert RS-232 (serial to USB)

http://www.sunrom.com/index.ph...i61affjfbah82tu6a9dgl4

 

[Jerb]

thanks for the tips, I'll look into upgrading to a parallel based printer

 

[Zepper]

Yeah, the Oki ones with a serial port are toward the high end while you can get an OKI with a parallel port pretty cheaply on that page - and maybe even for less elsewhere. The best price I found for a serial to parallel converter was the Aten cable from CostCentral - I bought some RAM from them on a super deal. They were very efficient for me.

.bh .

 

[phisrow]

One thing to be careful of: in some cases, applications using serial printers have roots going way back to before the concept of a general purpose printer driver(this was the norm, back in the DOS days, and persisted quite a bit longer in certain specialty applications). In these cases, the system had no knowledge of the printer; but whatever the specific application is would interact directly with the serial port, and use its knowledge of the appropriate printer language.

I ran into this not too long ago with a school system's grade reporting setup. The vendor provided a hardware/software bundle, with an application that pulled grades from the database, and dumped information to a custom serial printer that fed through report card forms. There was no printer driver as such, and I'm not even sure that the application supported "printing" in the modern sense. It may have been restricted to only talking to the accompanying printer.

If this is the case for your setup, then your options narrow considerably. You'll have to consult the app's documentation directly, figure out which serial printers(or serial printer languages) it can talk to, and work from there.
If the app is using the serial printer as an ordinary system printer, life is much simpler, just get any suitable modern printer and make the swap.

If it turns out that the app will only speak to a serial printer, and you can't get one at appropriate cost, you might have one other option. http://www.softpedia.com/get/S...ous/PrintCapture.shtml came up for me when I was poking at your problem. It is a piece of software that emulates a serial printer in software, and outputs image files. If you combine such software with a virtual serial port driver(or, in a pinch, connect one of the computer's serial ports to the other with a null modem cable) you should be able to convert the output of the legacy app to ordinary images which can then be printed by any common, cheap, system printer. Exactly how easy this will be depends on the capabilities of the programs, and your comfort with scripting and automation; but this might be one of those problems better attacked in software than in hardware, seeing as serial printers aren't getting any more common or cheap as time goes on.

 

[Dari]

Jesus. Can't they just upgrade the computer/printer?

 

[Zepper]

Depends on the application. As I said earlier and phlsrow repeated above, some old applications are still being used from back in the DOS days and they are hard coded for the old standard serial and/or parallel port addresses and IRQs and these days a serial port labeled COM1: could be any address with an IRQ number (nothing higher than 15 in those days) not even dreamt of in the days of yore... IRQs of 3 or 4 for serial and 7 or 5 for parallel was all that was generally offered in that old software (if even that many options). They continue to run the software because it is reliable and does something that they still need done. Besides, in current Windwoes, you don't get direct access to the hardware ports anyway - it's all virtualized.
. They might be able to upgrade the software to deal with the ambiguous printer ports in use today, but probably not. Might have been coded by some long-gone fireman in BASIC, if so they could update it using VB for Windows and modern hardware.

.bh.