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command immediately moves the printhead to the left margin
and then prints the remainder of the line from left to right.
W The seven bit dilemma
Some computers (not the IBM-PC fortunately!) don’t have
the capability to send eight bits on their parallel interface, but
can only send seven bits. This would make it impossible for
these computers to use this printer’s block graphics characters
and special symbols if our engineers hadn’t thought of a so-
lution. (All of these characters have ASCII codes greater than
127 which means that the eighth bit must be on to use them.)
The solution lies in the three control codes given in the fol-
lowing table:
Table 6-3
Eighth bit controls
Function
Turn the eighth bit ON
Control code
<ESC> “>”
<ESC> “=”
Turn the eighth bit OFF
(Except IBM-P mode)
<FS> “z”
(IBM-P mode)
Accept the eighth bit “as is” from < ESC, ,,#,,
the computer
n Block graphics characters and special symbols
Besides the upper and lower case letters and symbols that
we are by now familiar with, your printer has a whole different
set of characters that are for special uses. These characters
include block graphics for drawing forms and graphs, and
special symbols for mathematical, engineering and professional
uses. The special characters are included in two character sets.
The character set you normally use with the IBM mode is called
character set #l. The special characters are printed out when
you send ASCII codes 160-255 to the printer.
Your printer also offers character set #2 which is almost the
same as character set #l except for the addition of ASCII codes
3 N 6, 21, and 128 N 159. Character set #2 is selected with
<ESC>
“6”; to go back to character set #l, use < ESC >
“7.”