Peter Alcibiades wrote:
Sorry, should have said what printer. It is a Star SP300 dot matrix parallel interface. I made a silly mistake - the 500 has linux drivers, but the 300 does not. Partly I don't want to be out £40, but also at this point there is an intellectual challenge involved!
I think it might be possible to print directly to it in 'raw' mode - there are hints about this on the net.
ls > dev/lp0
and there is something about setting up the printer as make = raw, with model as raw queue, after which you are supposed to be able to print to it with
lpr -P queuefile
If I can figure out how to get some characters, any characters, sent over to it to print, then I can certainly find a way to format the string so they come out right.
I do have windows drivers, and can experiment with them if I can figure out what experiment to do....
My memory is a bit rusty on these things, but in Windows, didn't you used to be able to copy a file to a printer with the /b switch so that it would be copied in binary mode? Isn't that what your raw mode is?
So if you're experimenting, you might try that for a kick-off.
Another thought, again from the memory banks, can you set the printer to emulate something else, perhaps by sending it a sequence of instructions? Would you then be able to drive the emulated printer from linux?