Summary of Features

Line Printer Interface Board
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Western Process Computers, Inc. is pleased to offer the Laser/Link Line Printer Interface adapter board from Sault Computer Systems, Inc. This adapter allows the Honeywell user, with a PX4000PBCN1 line printer drive board in his system to replace the line printer with a laser printer (or virtually any parallel or serial printer).

In addition, the Laser/Link can also be used to connect the line printer output to a PC, server, or DEC computer for storage of the line printer output, or for network access to the data, (e.g. an electronic logs application where logs currently printed on the line printer are dumped to a PC or server via the Laser/Link adapter).

General Description
The Laser/Link adapter consists of a paddle board which plugs in to the Genie bus backplane, replacing the line printer paddle board and interface cable. No changes are required to be made to the PX4000PBCN1 line printer drive board or Honeywell software.

The Laser/Link adapter can be configured for either parallel or serial operation via a header block. When configured for serial operation, the baud rates are selected by a DIP switch. In serial mode, the adapter uses both DTR and "XON/XOFF" flow control.

The Laser/Link board translates line printer control codes and characters to standard ASCII characters and formats the data for either serial or parallel output as selected by the user.

When configured for parallel operation, the board accepts a standard PC to "Centronic" parallel printer cable. Also, a test mode is built in, allowing the board to print out 2 pages of sliding character set to the printer without any support or intervention by the Honeywell computer.

When the Laser/Link board is configured for serial operation, baud rates are selected via a DIP switch. Baud rates from 1,200 to 38,400 baud are available.