Manual

The mechanism used in the printer prints one line of dots

across at a time. This means that when it prints one line

of characters it has actually printed ten lines of dots

where the first eight lines make up the character and the

last two lines are blank for the space between character

lines. By using the CHR$(18) control code, you can tell the

printer which dots to print for one whole dot line. Since

there are 144 dots per line, you must follow the CHR$(18)

control code with 144 bits of information. For every place

there is a one in the 144 bit pattern you send, the printer

will print a dot. Rather than receive one bit at a time the

printer expects to receive the information eight bits at a

time. This means that after receiving a CHR$(18) the next

eighteen 8 bit characters it receives will be printed as

dots to form one dot line.

To figure out the dot pattern values to send after the

CHR$(18), you will need some grid paper. A large sheet

with 144 grid boxes across would be convenient. If such a

large sheet of paper is not available, you could divide your

pattern in half and work with 72 grid boxes across. Divide

up your grid paper by drawing a heavy line down every 8

boxes across. Now fill in each box of the grid that you

want to be printed. Now do the following procedure to

compute the eighteen values which describe your desired

bit pattern.

Imagine placing the number sequence over each of the

first eight grid boxes.

Now add together all the numbers above the boxes

which are filled in or have a dot as in the example above.

In our example, we would have 2 + 16 + 32 which

equals 50. ‘50’ then would be the first entry of a data

statement which would be followed by seventeen more

numbers computed in the exact same manner as the

example.

Once you have the eighteen values in a data statement,

you need simply run a program which prints a CHR$(18)

followed by the data value read from the data statement.

Don’t forget to end all of your print statements with

semicolon. This will prevent carriage returns CHR$(13)

from being sent, which would become part of the

eighteen data values for which the printer is waiting.

Dot GraphicsDot Graphics

Dot Graphics

Code 18Code 18

Code 18

2020