RE: Okidata printer and top of form

Just getting through all the old email and saw this; I haven't seen any
replies.  So here goes.

I presume that what you're desiring is that, no matter where the paper is
loaded, the printer knows that the form must be x.xx inches from the
physical top of the form before printing begins.  Most dot matrix printers
I've ever seen have something to "set a top of form".  Have a look at the
manual and look for that.  (Sometimes top of form is shorthanded to "TOF".)

Preferably, you want to keep this at the printer hardware level, and avoid
mucking around with overrides on the /400 (not sure there is such an animal,
tho).  The only thing I can suggest, and this comes as a somewhat "painful"
lesson learned just a few weeks ago, when you design the printer file
output, line 1 in the printer file should correlate to the physical top of
form.  If you're real lucky, you might even get it to line up with the
printer's default TOF.  In the past, I've seen that line 1 output on the 400
prints halfway down the page on paper.  The recent "painful" lesson was one
where the 400 printer file had line 46 as the first line, but it actually
needed to print on the paper's line 38.  Net result is that line 1 "prints"
on the previous page and the problem is that where I had to set TOF on this
particular printer, it would always waste one page when ejecting the page
just printed.  Since this shop does a lot of page-at-a-time printing, they
were projected to waste approximately 40% of their form stock.  They're
getting the form resdesigned.

- Dan Bale
(I am *NOT* "Dale"
http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/200105/msg00281.html )
SAMSA, Inc.
989-790-0507
DBale@SAMSA.com <mailto:DBale@SAMSA.com>
  Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur.
  (Whatever is said in Latin seems profound.)


-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-admin@midrange.com
[mailto:midrange-l-admin@midrange.com]On Behalf Of Dan Rasch
Sent: Monday, March 25, 2002 2:25 PM
To: midrange-l@midrange.com
Subject: Okidata printer and top of form

I have been asked to produce a solution that will cause a preprinted
form to always skip to the same position on a dot-matrix Okidata printer,
specifically the ML92 model.

The intent is to load the form, and when the online key is pressed, the
form will constantly skip to the same line, as a start for the spoolfile
to begin printing.

The same logic has to also work on a Lexmark model 2380 Plus.

Is this something Okidata would control, or can I use an override from
the AS/400?


TIA,

Dan Rasch - because if the human species concentrated on the really
important things in life, there would be a shortage of fishing poles!
IBM Certified twice....... but still a couple PTFs away from Nirvana.