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Section 6. Troubleshooting
SATO M10e PN 9001101 Rev. A Page 6-9
ENQUIRE/ACK/NAK
In the Bi-Com 4 mode, the host transmits an ENQ (05 hexadecimal) to the printer and
the printer will respond with its status within five milliseconds. If printing, it will respond
upon finishing the current label, then resume printing. In order for this protocol to work
properly with an RS232C Optional Interface, pin 6 (DTR) and pin 5 (CTS) must be
held high by the host. One way to ensure these pins are always in the correct state is to
tie pin 20 (DTR) to pin 6 (DSR) and pin 4 (RTS) to pin 5 (CTS) at the printer end of the
cable.
ENQUIRE (ENQ)
Upon receipt of an ENQ command, the printer responds with 25 bytes of status
information bounded by an STX/ETX pair. The Bi-Com protocol works only in the
Multi Job Buffer mode. The status information is defined as follows:
<STX>{ 2 Byte ID}{1 Status Byte}{6 Byte Label Remaining}{16 Byte Job Name}<ETX>
ID - This is a two byte number identifying the current print job ID. The print job ID is
defined using the <ESC>ID Job ID command transmitted with the print job (see Job
ID Store in the command listing for more information on how to use this command).
The range is from 00 to 99.
Status - A single byte defining the current status of the printer (see the Status Byte
Definition table).
Label Remaining - Six bytes defining the number of labels remaining in the current
print job. The range is from 000000 to 999999 labels.
Job Name - 16 bytes of ASCII characters identifying the name assigned to the job by
the <ESC>WK Job Name command. If the Job Name is less than 16 characters, the
field will be padded with leading zeroes.
If an ENQ is received after the print job specified in the ID bytes has been completed,
or there is no data in the buffer, the printer will respond with two “space” characters
(20 hexadecimal) for the ID number, six “zero” characters (30 hexadecimal) in the
Remaining Labels bytes and the 16 byte Job Name.
CANCEL (CAN)
If a CAN (18 hexadecimal) command is received , it will stop the print job and clear all
data from the receive and print buffers. A delay of five milliseconds or more is required
before any new data can be downloaded. The CAN command is effective immediately
upon receipt, even if the printer is off-line or in an error condition. The printer will
return an ACK (06 hexadecimal) if there is no printer error condition and a NAK (15
hexadecimal) if an error condition exists.
PRINT JOB
Upon receipt of a valid print job (<ESC>A . . . <ESC>Z), an ACK (06 hexadecimal)
will be returned by the printer if there are no errors and a NAK (16 hexadecimal) if a
printer error exists.