Tweaking an Impact Printer

[dakota81]

We're switching out from a DOS accounting software at work to a custom application written in Microsoft Access.

Anywho, our invoices are printed on an impact printer, we've got an Okidata ML320. I finally got Access to properly print using the printer specific fonts, but one thing still, the printer makes a double pass over each line when printing from Windows, but not from the DOS software. Obviously, if I can force the printer some how to just do a single pass, it'll be much faster printing.

Anyone got any advice?

 

[ceh4702]

Sometimes the printer has a set of dip switches and you have to play with them. That is how we changed or set up my first DOS printer. Helps to know what to change them to.
If it has the dip switches it is completely controlled by them and no driver will affect how the printer acts.

On other printers you have a menu built in to change the options for the linefeeds and carriage returns.

Try getting ahold of a manual. If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[sghouse]

we use oki 320's to print from both unix and windows. unix prints fast in regular text mode but the windows printer drivers for oki 320 always prints windows fonts in graphics mode. once we setup the windows printer to use the GENERIC/TEXT ONLY driver we were able to print just as fast from windows as from unix on the same printer.

 

[dakota81]

I've got the program set up to use the special Courier fonts that are supplied with the drivers from Okidata, which speeds up printing immensly, but still slower that our DOS program. I will give the text only printer driver a try tomorrow.

 

[dakota81]

The Windows drivers are overwritting what the printer defaults to. I finally figured out how to navigate the menu of the Okidata printer, set it to high speed draft, but when printing from windows it switched over to near letter quality then when done printing switched back to high speed draft.

Tried the Generic Text Only driver and that helps, but the first line of text is low on the page compared to how the Okidata driver treats the pages, so much that I want to avoid using the generic driver.

I guess this is an issue w/ Okidata.