I N I T P 6 . C O M ============================ A Printer-Initialisation Utility for a 24-Pin Dot Matrix Printer. by Steve Filan School of Geography University of New South Wales Box 1, P.O. Kensington NSW 2033 Version 1.00 September 5th, 1987 FUNCTIONS OF INITP6 ------------------- INITP6.COM is used to set a variety of controls for use of a 24-pin dot matrix printer connected to an 8- bit microcomputer operating under CP/M (version 2.2 or later). The program first resets a printer to standard switch-on default values; sets page length for use of A4 sized paper; and then offers a series of choices for settings for a 24-pin dot matrix printer. The options which can be set when using INITP6 are:- (a). Print size: 10, 12, 15, 17 or 20 characters per inch. (b). Printing mode: draft quality or letter quality. (c). Print enhancement: unenhanced, emphasised, or both emphasised and double-strike. (d). Line spacing: i. Standard 6 lines per inch, giving 70 lines per page of A4 paper. ii. Double-space (3 lines per inch). iii. One-and-a-half spacing (4 lines per inch). iv. Approximately 6.67 lines per inch, giving about 78 lines per A4 page. This spacing gives quite a satisfactory appearance with 15-, 17- or 20-pitch print. v. Approximately 7.33 lines per inch, giving about 86 lines per A4 page: rather crowded for solid text, but at least legible with the smaller print sizes. OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS ---------------------- Assuming that INITP6.COM is present on a disk in the default drive, simply enter INITP6 at the CP/M system prompt and press . An on- screen message will remind you that the printer should be connected and switched on before further operation. Touch 'y' or 'Y' when you are ready to proceed (there is no need to use the RETURN key when reponding to prompts in INITP6). The system will then offer a series of menu-style prompts, each of which can be answered by touching a single key. Once the printer controls have been set, the program returns control to the normal CP/M operating system. MACHINE-SPECIFIC FEATURES ------------------------- This utility program has been developed for use with a NEC P6 Pinwriter 24-pin dot matrix printer. The printer-control commands embedded in the program are likely to be compatible with those in various other 24-pin printers (e.g., the Epson LQ-series), but I have not had access to printers or manuals to confirm this. The program was prepared on an Osborne 1, but should function satisfactorily on most CP/M systems. There is one feature which may affect on-screen displays on some systems: Control-Z is used to clear the screen. RELATED FILES ------------- This code is released to the public domain. The main components released are: (a). The executable version INITP6.COM (this may also be encountered in squeezed form as INITP6.CQM). INITP6.COM is a 2k file, and is the only file which is essential for use of the system. (b). Source code, as INITP6.ASM (may also be found in squeezed form as INITP6.AQM). This code has been written in 8080 Assembler language. The code was assembled and loaded using the standard ASM.COM and LOAD.COM utilities supplied with CP/M version 2.2. (c). Documentation (this text). INITP6.DOC (or the squeezed version INITP6.DQC) holds the document as a Wordstar "document" file. Some users may prefer to have the same text as INITP6.TXT (or squeezed version INITP6.TQT), a "non-document" or plain ASCII text file which can be viewed or printed without use of Wordstar. The various files in the system may stored within a "library" file, INITP6.LBR ACKNOWLEDGEMENT --------------- A number of elements (for example, input-output subroutines) of INITP6 have been adapted from code published by other writers. In particular, I am conscious of heavy reliance on material from Barbier (1983) and Leventhal (1978). REFERENCES ---------- Barbier, K. (1983). CP/M Assembly Language Programming. Englewood Cliffs. Prentice Hall. Leventhal, L.A. (1978). 8080A/8085 Assembly Language Programming. Berkeley. Osborne/McGraw-Hill.  Leventhal, L.A. (1978). 8080A/8085 Assembly Language