Rose Electronics Porter - Manual (Page 11)

PORTER INSTALLATION AND OPERATIONS MANUAL
7
Parallel Porter
1. Cable your devices to ports 1-4 (or 8) with a straight-through cable that has male
Centronics connectors on each end.
2. Cable your computer to port 0 with your computer standard parallel Centronics cable.
3. Connect the power adapter and turn the unit on. The power light should glow green.
The LEDs sequence through the power up tests. The ERROR LED will be on for any
errors. See Tables II and III for the LED sequences.
4. Send data from your application or print program. Data will be routed automatically
to the current connect port.
5. Read this manual and use the configuration procedure if you want to change the
prefix, power-on connect port, or the broadcast group. See the section on PORTER
COMMANDS for further information.
Configuring Your PC
If you have a serial Porter, you must make sure that you set up your serial port for the
correct baud rate and LPT1; redirection (if necessary). Redirection refers to the ability for
data sent to a parallel port to be sent to a serial port instead. Dos has a command (the
MODE command) to do this. So, for example, if you will be using the factory default
protocol of 9600 baud, 8-bit word length, no parity, and 1 stop bit, then you need to
include in your AUTOEXEC.Bat file the following statements:
MODE COM1;96,N,8,1,P
MODE LPT1:=COM1
Your application software must be set up to match the setting of the port on the Porter
that you will be using. If you will be using redirection, you must install your program(s) to
use the parallel port; otherwise, the setting of the serial port must exactly match the
setting of the Porter's port that you will be using. Many of today's software packages
have a flexible method of printing such as using the settings from the DOS MODE
command or a configurable printer setup. For these programs, setting up the program to
use the parallel port, and then redirecting LPT1 to COM1 using the DOS MODE command
is the simplest method.
However, some programs have fixed settings that can't be changed; and example of this
type of program is AutoCAD, Ventura Publishing, and others. Some of these programs
such as Ventura, can be setup to use the parallel port and redirect the output with the
DOS MODE command. For the rest of these programs this method will not work; in
these cases, you must set the serial port of your computer to exactly match the setting of
the Porter's port that you will be using.
If you have a parallel Porter, you don't need to worry about serial protocols and
redirection. You should install your software package(s) to use the parallel port when
printing. It will also be useful to put the following statement in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file:
MODE LPT1:;;P
This statement will set the parallel port for infinite retry.