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CHAPTER 6
SPECIALFEATURES OF
THE PRINTER
Subjectscoveredin Chapter6 inckde-
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Printer’s bell
Master reset
Uni-directionalprinting
Internationalcharactersets
PrintingBIG characters
The optionalsheet feeder
Macro instruction
Readinga 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 groupings
that we have looked at so far, but they add a lot of useful
features to your printer.
■ Now hear this
You may have heard the printer’s bellif you have ever run out
of paper. And you may have wondered why it’s called a bell
when it beepsinstead 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 bellcodeis 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.
The code to sound the “bell” is CHR$(7), which is
ASCII code
7 or (BEL). Any time your printer receives this code it will
sound the bell for a quarter of a second. This can be used to re-