Date   : Sat, 17 Mar 2007 16:54:48 +0000 (GMT)
From   : info@... (Sprow)
Subject: BBC compatible dot matrix printer with 2 ribbons

In article <45FC1A88.4060004@...>,
   Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk@...> wrote:

> > I've got a DeskJet 1120c lying around that has a Centronics connector.
>
> Hmm, are you sure they aren't from the modern generation of cheap printers 
> which essentially assemble an image of the page on the host computer

Page 23 of the manual on HP's website mentions it understands PCL 3, and has
2MB of onboard RAM which suggests it's got brains of its own. Another clue
is that it supports printing under DOS and they refer you to an older model
for a suitable driver for DOS programs.

It should be perfectly possible to get it to print to it from a BBC, you
just need to send it the magic burble of escape codes to switch it into text
only mode. I just grabbed a Deskjet 850C driver and it uses:

?E?&l1H?&l26A?&k0G?&l0o6d0l0E?(0N?(s0p10h12v0s0b3T?)0N?)s0p10h12v0s3b3T?&l65F?&a3R?&a0C

where '#' is character 27.

The trick is to print from a Windows program which doesn't do fancy text,
Notepad maybe, create a new document with some known text "hello" for
example, print to file via the driver, open the ".prn" file and look for
your known text, and rip off the stuff preceding it,
Sprow.