Hi all.
Yesterday I connected my LA210 Letterprinter to the printerport of a VT102.
Both are set at 9600 Bd, 8 databits, no parity and 1 stopbit.
However when I send some 5 characters from the VT102 to the printer, it
prints many mirrored question marks and other 'strange' characters.
Okay, I thought, the baudrate setting, etc. is not correct. But it is.
These are the checks I have done so far.
1) The used cable is an original DEC BC22D-25. This cable is mentioned in
the LA210 Letterprinter User Guide.
2) From the VT102 User Guide, I build the EIA loopback connector.
It is a 25 pin D connector and has pin #2 wired to #3 and #15, pin #4
wired to #5 and #8, pin #20 wired to #6 and #22, and pin #19 is wired
to #12 and #17.
The VT102 passes the Printer Loopback Self-Test, ESC [ 2 ; 16 y
3) The LA210 passes the Internal Self-Test. Among others, it prints that
the speed is 9600 Bd, so I know those DIP switches are set ok. It also
print lines with all characters in it.
4) The LA210 I/O Loopback Tests only mentions to plug in a loopback
connector. I assume I can use the same one as the one used on the VT102.
The Loopback Test gives an error. The output text is:
Control lines failed. (20 mA ?, jumpers ?)
Data path OK
Printing loopback
<many lines with all characters in it>
I do not understand the message "Control lines failed".
I am using EIA, so it can not be a current loop problem.
When I connect the BC22D to the VT102 and the LA210, the "Data Set Ready"
LED on the LA210 goes on.
Am I using the correct loopback connector on the LA210?
Has anybody seen this problem before?
I have no field maintenance print set of the LA210 ....
kind regards,
Henk Gooijen,
PDP-11 collector
http://home.12move.nl/~sh416008
Received on Thu May 17 2001 - 02:18:09 BST