Diablo 630 printer conversie module.

Preface

A papermill recently made the following request:

"Our reporting sytem only support Xerox Diablo 630 compatible printers. Would it be possible to connect an ordinary ASCII printer to our system ?"

The printer is located in the process environment, and prone to wear. As Diablo 630 compatible printers are getting obsolete, a long term solution was sought after.

JWA Systems developed the "Page Rendering Module" a device that translates Diablo 630 codes into plain ASCII.

Description

The module is seated between the computer and the printer. It fits in the palm of the hand and is powered by an ordinary 9V wall adaptor. The module features RS232 handshaking at both sender and printer end. A parallel (Centronics) version is available on request.

Schematic diagram of a typical installation.

RS-232 Signalflow

Features

The module can interpret most of the special commands used with the 630. It sends out plain ASCII, without using absolute vertical / horizontal positioning of the head, which is used extensively with 630 applications. This reduces printer wear and speeds up the printing process. Data can be captured to a PC as well, rendering plain ascii text.

Technical brief

The heart of the module is an ATMEL 8515 RISC processor and 32Kb of SRAM. While data comes in, the 630 emulator prints data to SRAM as if it were a sheet of paper. After an FF (formfeed) character is received, the SRAM is dumped to the printer. Multi-strike printing is enabled by using 4 virual sheets of paper in SRAM.

This table lists all commands recongnized by the module:

ASCII	Hex	Omschrijving
BS	08	Back space
HT	09	Horizontal tab
LF	0A	Line feed
VT	0B	Vertical tab
FF	0C	Form Feed
CR	0D	Carriage return
CR LF 1	0D	Carriage control: double space
CR LF 2	0D	Carriage control: formfeed
ESC HT(n)	1B, 09, n	Absolute horizontal tab
ESC LF	1B, 0A	Negative linefeed
ESC VT(n)	1B, 0B, n	Absolute vertical tab
ESC FF(n)	1B, 0C, n	Set number of lines per page
ESC M	1B, 4D	Auto Justify
ESC =	1B, 3D	Center text
ESC 0	1B, 30	Right margin set
With PCL5 printer:
ESC US HT	1B, 1F, 19	15 char / inch
ESC S	1B, 53	10 char / inch
ESC O	1B, 4F	Enable bold / double strike
ESC &	1B, 26	Disable bold and underline
ESC E	1B, 45	Enable underline
ESC R	1B, 52	Disable underline

Most applications are served by this emulation, but additions can be made quite easily. Please contact us for more information.

This article was written by Arian van Dorsten jwasys@xs4all.nl
The most recent version can be found on: http://www.xs4all.nl/~jwasys