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CHAPTER 5
SPECIAL FEATURES OF
THE PRINTER
Subjects covered in Chapter 5 include-
. Printer’s bell
l Master reset
l Uni-directional printing
l International character sets
l Printing BIG characters
l The optional sheet feeder
l Macro instruction
l Reading a hex dump
In the previous chapters we have learned about several
groups of control codes. In this chapter we will look at more con-
trol codes. These codes don’t fit neatly into any of the group-
ings that we have looked at so far, but they add a lot of useful
features to your printer.
n Now hear this
You may have heard the printer’s bell if you have ever run out
of paper. And you may have wondered why it’s called a bell
when it beeps instead of ringing! It’s a long story that goes back
to the early days of computers, when teletype machines were
used for computer terminals. These mechanical marvels were
equipped with a bell that could be heard for blocks. This bell
was used to signal the operator that something needed atten-
tion. The code that the computer sent to the teletype machine to
ring the bell was, reasonably enough, called a bell code. The
name bell code is still with us, even if the bell has changed to a
beeper, and a lot of people still call the beeper a bell, even if it
doesn’t sound like one.