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can't get "print" to work in rss

Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2003 8:29 pm
by PCSAR 4x4 652
Hello, All.
I need to print out f4,f6,f3 ( conv personaliteis) in the rss for my mts2000.
when I try to do this, the window says "printing..." but does not print.
Any ideas? other than the obvious "is your printer on, hooked up etc."
Thanks.

Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2003 8:40 pm
by JAYMZ
Does it need to be configured in the "Computer Configuration" menu in the RSS? I honestly don't remember now.

Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2003 8:50 pm
by KG6EAQ
What kind of printer do you have? I've never had it work unless it was a dot matrix, or standard generic capable laser printer.

Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2003 9:31 pm
by YoChief
And if it does manage to fire the printer, it prints WAY outside the borders.

Never had ANY luck at all printing. :cry:

Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2003 9:46 pm
by n8uhn
yep, the ink jet and most laser printers are a huge pain to try to get them to print in dos.

i use a laser printer that has a dos mode or a dot matrix printer.

you could try to find out if rss will print to a file then open the file in windows.

Bill

Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2003 10:01 pm
by Monty
Hi:

As yu have discovered, many persons are into the
Plug and Play type OS's.

What you 1st must do is have the Drivers for your
Printer, and make sure they are configured properly

If you list what type of printer you have and what
kind of Computer you have, then, we might be able
to help...

Most printers ( older types ) will work OK when properly
set up...Good Old HP500's are great for Older series Computers
and they cab be found cheap too

Monty

Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2003 10:07 pm
by PCSAR 4x4 652
There is no printer setup in "set up computer" in the RSS.
It's a lexmark z22.
It won't print in dos (on the DOS 6.22 only 486) or dos mode under win98se or dos prompt in WinME.
There is no print to file. There is "print screen" but it's on a black background. I re-colored the screen for black on white but the closest to white I can get is grey.
you can run the rss on a pentium, you just don't want to read/write on anything over 486.

Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2003 10:08 pm
by PCSAR 4x4 652
thinkpad 755c 486/ dos 6.22 lexmark z22 printer

Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2003 11:10 pm
by Mike B
In the "old" DOS days, before windows, printers used to just take the data shoved out the parallel port and print it. There were some special control codes, but there was NO fancy control support from the computer. Since Windows came along, the printer manufactures started figuring out how to offload the burden of preprocessing the information to be printed back onto the computer. This made the printers less complex and less expensive to build. Hence, allot of modern printers need special drivers and support from the computer that DOS does not provide.

In other words, not all printers are capable of printing under DOS. If you read the fine print in your printer specification, it might tell you if it is DOS compatible or not. I suspect your printer is not DOS compatible. If this is the case, you will need to get a different DOS compatible printer to print under DOS.

Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2003 11:16 pm
by PCSAR 4x4 652
Mine has a box with a checkmark "enable DOS printing". I think, though, i may just get an old dot matrix printer and see if that works. $10-20.00 should do it.

Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2003 8:40 pm
by Al
You might try this: From a DOS prompt, type copy con: lpt1: <enter>
<then type a test line here>
<ctrl-Z>

then your test line should be printed if everything's working.
If it isn't, and you want to go further, first make sure the printer's online led is lit(if there *is* one), then check the cable by substitution if possible. Finally, if all else fails, check to make sure that lpt1 is enabled in the BIOS setup routines(IBM may call it device manager, or some such).

Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2003 9:07 pm
by elkbow
You said the 'window' says 'printing', are you running the RSS from Windows through a DOS window, that will be part of your problem. What you may want to try also is using a 'screen capture' program to capture the data and then print the file. You can search the Inet for these, should be some freeware programs.

Posted: Wed Feb 05, 2003 3:26 am
by OX
I had the same problem with a Lexmark Z31. Back on Win98, I had to run the RSS from a DOS window in order to get the printing to work. Of course, I wouldn't read or write the radio but just use a saved codeplug. There was a proggy call LPTX which you can run from DOS mode and it will capture the text going out of your LPT port and save it to a TXT file.

That may be the long route but since migrating to ME, 2000 and XP, that's the only way I've gotten it to work lately.

I'll email it to you if I can find it (I should)

Printer problem "Dos" Windows

Posted: Wed Feb 05, 2003 6:58 am
by Susan157
:wink:

Yes this is fun trying to print.We have many programs that are made for dos only.

we use newer computers and the windows will not allow printing. we had to go to computer dealers to find a printer that
works on our dos programs."This is TRUE"

Posted: Wed Feb 05, 2003 8:41 am
by mike m
Do what I do to save yourself a major headache and having to go from dos to windows and try various settings.

Just bring up the particular RSS screen that you want to print and then on the keyboard select the PRINT SCREEN key, should be just above the insert key and then select START/PROGRAMs/ACCESSORIES/PAINT and select EDIT then PASTE from the main PAINT menu and paste the page into PAINT and then print it out. This is a pain if you have lots of pages to print out but it works fine, you can switch back and forth between the RSS and PAINT if you just run RSS from Windows with the intention of printing the fields only and not programming or reading the radio, all you want is a hard copy of the RSS dos fields.


Mike