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Help me troubleshoot


Opry99er

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I have a Panasonic 1091 printer which was hooked up to my TI for years. For the last 4 years, it has been in storage.

 

It's out now... I bought a set of brand new ribbon cartridges, and I've hooked it up to the TI via the PIO port on the RS232 card. Nice!!!

 

I want to make some disk catalogs for my many many disks I have around here, so I plugged up DM2, CATALOG option, and then selected Solid State Printer. No dice.

 

I then did a custom output device of "PIO" (in case it was referring to the thermal printer). No dice

 

So I typed up a sample BASIC program, then typed "LIST "PIO"". It paused, as it should, acting like it wanted to send, but no dice again.

 

 

I've reseated the cables and cleaned up the Centronix end... it was a bit dirty. Still no dice.

 

So I checked the TI-side PIO connector and noticed that it can plug in either way (no reference pin or anything). I swapped the orientation and tried again... no dice.

 

The Printer looks to be functioning properly... it registers as ON LINE and it will pull on friction or tractor. I don't really know where else to go on this one. The cable I have for it has been stored neatly rolled up in a sleeve since it's been in storage, so I'm not quite ready to blame the cable.

 

 

Any thoughts on how to proceed with my troubleshooting efforts?

Edited by Opry99er
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Shame...Shame...

You did a bad thing, plugging the cable in wrongly.
I think there is only output to PIO(meaning it is not possible for the printer itself to generate an error)... the attempt to print LIST from BASIC should complete(return cursor) even with RS232 w/o a printer connected. Perhaps you damaged something... or maybe you have a conflict? :?

 

P.S. what exactly does "no dice" mean?

Edited by HOME AUTOMATION
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LIST "PIO" in BASIC locks up the machine until a FCTN+4 is executed... at which point it throws an IO ERROR 36.

 

I have tried another rs233 card with precisely the same results.

 

 

"No dice" is a phrase from early 20th century when gamblers would be locked up for gambling. If the officers couldn't produce 'dice' during the trial, the judge would throw out the case. More commonly, it is an informal way of expressing an undesired result.

 

In this case, it is a way of saying "This didn't work"

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So I know it isn't my TI, and the chances of the exact same issue existing in two different RS232 cards is slim to none...

 

It has to be an issue with the printer or the cable... unless I am simply missing something entirely. I might try using a program that is designed to print to the PIO port and see what it does. Need to find that program.

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The red stripe of the ribbon cable usually denotes pin 1. I know that there are different cables for different printers. They are not interchangeable.

They have different wiring configurations. Are you sure your cable is wired for a panasonic? Are the dip switches set correctly on your KX-P1091?

Do they match the port PIO configuration?

 

post-65819-0-68344400-1548281898_thumb.jpg

 

post-65819-0-53555300-1548283070.jpg

Edited by twoodland
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The cable pictured does not wire any of the status returns from the printer. How would the host computer even know if the printer is listening? The pins I see are:

 

1 - Strobe

2-9 - Data

11 - Busy (well, okay there's ONE printer status line)

16 - Signal ground

17 - Shield (but it doesn't seem to go to shield?)

19-29 - Signal ground (30 does not seem to be connected. Also, I assume there's a wire on the bottom that runs to all of those pins, but it's hard to tell).

 

So the only thing I see that could make it "wait" for output to the printer is if it sees the BUSY pin as active (low). Or if it expects the printer to acknowledge selection or data received, which will never happen with that cable.

So, which pin is pin 11 on the Centronics connected to? SPARE IN or HANDSHAKE IN?

 

Even further reading: http://www.unige.ch/medecine/nouspikel/ti99/rs232c.htm#PIOSample

 

This seems to indicate that the printer's acknowledge pin (10 on the centronics side) needs to be connected to HANDSHAKE IN. Pin 10 in that picture looks like a virgin pin, never even touched by solder.

Edited by ChildOfCv
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All of those things you mentioned are exactly true. There are no connections on the bottom row of pins, the grounds are jumpered out

 

Based on what you're saying, I could have an issue with pin 11 on the Centronics side, since that's the only line that could possibly cause this behavior on the TI side...

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