tutorial for sending commands to okidata printer

[dhazer]

I was wondering if any knew the process for how to send printer commands to a printer. In particular I'm working with a okidata microline 320 turbo (no letter after the turbo, just a turbo). I noticed online at okidata.com that there's a Microline Referrence Manual at

http://my.okidata.com/PP-ML320Turbo.nsf?opendatabase

In it are command, like a Reverse Line Feed which is:
ASCII: ESC j n
Dec: 27 106 n
Hex: 1B 6A n the re

where n is the number of lines,

but I don't know how to send it to my printer. I beleive I need to the use windows copy command with the /b (binary) switch when I send the file to the printer, but I don't know how to go about doing this. I'm sure it's simple.

Is there a anyone out there that know this?

 

[DansDadUK]

You can automate this, up to a point, on Windows systems, by setting up an appropriate entry in the Send To menu, which is available via the right-click context menu.

Exactly how this is done depends on which flavour of Windows you are running, but the principle is the same in each case:

(1) Create a batch file containing the required command, but with '%1' instead of the filename.

For a parallel port device on LPT1 this would be
copy /b %1 LPT1:

For a network connected device this would be:
lpr -S<IP-address> -P<queue> %1
where <IP-address> and <queue> are appropriate to the target device.

For a USB connected device you'd need something like:
net use LPT1 \\servername\sharename
copy /b %1 LPT1:

(2) Save this batch file; the location is immaterial, but it might be an idea to create a special folder for 'SendTo' scripts.

(3) Create a shortcut to the batch file, and save it in the current SendTo folder; where this is depends on which version of windows you are using.

For Windows XP, this would be the C:\Documents and Settings\username\SendTo folder (where username represents your user name.
(For some reason I've yet to find, it doesn't work if placed in the folder for All Users).