Aloha and T88 printers are slow?

[joenoreason]

I've had this problem for a while now and just ignored it because the printers are "fast enough", but I know they are no where near the proper speed. Years ago, when all of my terminals ran windows 98, my t88iii printers printed receipts as fast as they physically could (think self test). Fast forward to today and now under XP and Windows 7, my t88iii and t88iv print slower, and in bursts. The self test on the t88iv is amazingly fast, yet for whatever reason when I print anything from aloha it just bursts a few lines, a few lines, a few lines, etc until the check is printed. Very annoying to me because I know something is wrong somewhere.

I'm running OPOS, using serial printers, the highest baud rate they can handle and have tried all other methods of setting up a printer in aloha including Windows Printer and T80. OPOS is the fastest and the only one that formats on the paper properly (well, t80 does too, except the barcode is off). The "Windows Printer" setting was full speed if i use the font substitution option in the epson advanced driver, but the formatting of the check was very unusable. Makes me wonder if Aloha send non internal fonts to the check and then the printer prints it in graphic mode, but then I remember how it worked perfectly in windows 98.

Any ideas?

 

[coorsman]

Check your com port settings under advanced and make sure you have FIFO buffers unchecked.


Cheers,
Coorsman

cabaretsystems.com

 

[joenoreason]

I've done every possible variation of com port settings with FIFO buffers and without, matching all settings with the printer, the com port itself and the drivers to no avail. I've even changed parity, handshaking, stop bits just for the hell of it but nothing ever really changed anything...

Every printer uses the same null modem cable. These were brand new... Could there be something different with these cables? Seems unlikely I guess but I'm literally out of ideas at this point.

Is there a special OPOS (or APD) version that is suppose to be used, or just the latest versions? I've tried two different just to make sure, but same stuff. Same bursting laggy prints with OPOS, same bursting laggy prints with built in Aloha drivers.

Maybe Dip switch settings? I've tried adjusting the baud, parity and handshaking dips, but that didn't change anything, but maybe it's the other "reserved" switches that I'm screwing up on or one of the other switches like the buffer, but I'm just running defaults on those (all off)...

Thanks for your time

 

[Mi0tx]

Hello,

I had a similar problem with slow printers happen to me once before. I don't know if this will help you, but it won't hurt to let you know what I did.
In my case, there was a logo file in the BMP folder in the Aloha folder on the terminals, along with some large files stored in the NVRAM in the printer internal memory itself.
I cleared the NVRAM and deleted the blank logo files and the printers work faster than ever!

Have you tried clearing the NVRAM possibly?

You can find various useful utilities here:

https://download.epson-biz.com/modules/pos/index.php?page=prod&pcat=3&pid=36

I believe the logo utility is the one you can use to clear the NVRAM.

I hope this helps.

Good Luck!