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Installing dot matrix printer under W98

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by mark_albert

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I have an Epson FX85 that I still use to print checks. The printer is old,
but it does a great job with my checks. I have a removable hard disk for my main
drive and I am in the process of reinstalling Windows 98 on a new hard disk. I loaded thedriver for the Epson printer on the new hard disk, and when I print the test
page from the new hard disk, I get horizontal gaps on the printer test page.

I remember having the same problem when I was setting up my orignial hard disk, and
a technician suggested some kind of configuration change which solved the problem. Unfortuntately, I can't find a copy of the original correspondence, and I can't remember what I did to get the printer running correctly. I believe it had something to dowith some kind of "smart printing" or communication with the printer that is beyond the technical capacity of this admitedly antique printer.

I know the driver is OK, because I am using the same driver on the new drive that
is installed on theold drive, and the print from the old drive is just fine.

I have checked several times and I believe I set the control panel printer settings
on the new drive identical to those on the old drive, so I am pretty sure the problem
is somewhere else. I looked through autoexec.bat (Both drives are operating under Win 98), config.sys, win.ini, system.ini, and the registry, and no differences jump out at me, but my guess is that I am missing something in the registry or one of the configuration files.

5 replies

by xfeard

You can run from Start-Run...- MSCONFIG.
It let you see (and change every hidden setting of Win98). Compare between the two drives.
Good luck!!

by mark_albert

I didn't know about msconfig, but, as I mentioned in the original posting, I had already reviewed Win.ini, Sys.ini, config.sys, and Autoexec.bat to no avail.

Since my original posting, a friend suggeste that the problem was that the printer was so old that it didn't support bidirectional printing. This sounds like it is on the right track to me, but I can't find any way to disable bidiretional printing.

by gigelul

Maybe you make some changes in BIOS in peripheral settings for LPT. Try to use standard mode for LPT. Also this changes must be done in Windows and check that you don't have some conflicts.

by mark_albert

Thanks for the suggestion, but I have already tried that and it didn't work. Apparently there was a bug in the particular patch level of Windows 98 I was using. I even tried getting a new dot matrix printer from another manufacturer, and experienced the same problem until I upgraded to XP. Everything works fine under XP, despite some the bad press that product has received.

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