Service manual
SECTION 6: TROUBLESHOOTING
Page 6-2 SATO D508/D512 Operator Manual
6.2 USING THE IEEE1284 (PARALLEL) INTERFACE (CONT’D)
This may mean that the computer doesn’t know the 
printer is there. Verify that:
a. Both ends of the cable are securely inserted 
into their respective connectors
b The printer is ON LINE
c. The cable is not defective. There are other 
things that can cause this error message on 
your computer, but at this stage, a defective 
cable may be one of the reasons
6. When you send the print job to the printer and it 
does not respond, and there is no error mes-
sage on the PC:
A. Check your data stream to make sure it com-
plies with standard SATO commands. 
B. Verify that you’ve included all required parame-
ters in the data stream.
C. Verify the following:
• You have not typed a “0” (zero) for an “O” 
(letter) or vice-versa.
• You have not missed any SPBL commands/ 
headers where they’re needed.
• Make sure all printer command codes are 
capital letters.
7. If you’ve checked all of the above and the printer still isn’t 
printing, you may want to try a Receive Buffer DATA Dump to 
determine what (if anything) the printer is receiving from your 
computer. To print DATA Dumps see page 3-11, Configura-
tion and Operation.
 The parallel port is now listening for incoming data. Send 
your print job. The printer will now print (only once) a DATA 
Dump of everything it received from the host computer. Each 
2-digit hexadecimal character represents a character the 
printer received. It may be tedious, but now you can analyze 
and troubleshoot the data stream.
8. While checking the DATA Dump printout, look out for the 
sequence 0D 0A, which is a combination of Carriage Return 
and Line Feed characters. The command string should be 
continuous, and you should not see CR or LF characters 
between the SBPL commands. 
Observations










