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HP Forum Archive 18

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hp 82240A Printer - Sacrilege?
Message #1 Posted by Tito de Magalhaes on 28 Dec 2007, 10:52 a.m.

Hello, all!

I am new to this forum and have a question regarding a hp 82240A Infrared Printer.

I am a Handheld and Pocket PC fanatic (exclusively HP/Compaq) and today I bumped onto this Infrared Printer.

Upon some research I came across the information that it is meant to be used with some of the HP´s scientific calculators and, from there, to this forum.

My question to you is:

Is there anyway of making this printer work with WinCe 2.0 or higher (HPC2000, PPC2002, etc.) ?

Is there any drive that could do the trick?

Thank you in advance for any information you might want to spare,

and my apologies for such a question, which does not really relate to calculators, and that (hopefully) may bring an unorthodox usage to the printer.

Happy New Year!!!

      
Re: hp 82240A Printer - Sacrilege?
Message #2 Posted by Eric Smith on 28 Dec 2007, 1:26 p.m.,
in response to message #1 by Tito de Magalhaes

There's no easy way to make the 82440A or B work with any kind of PC, handheld or otherwise. If the PC has IR output that has sufficiently low-level control ability (not IRDA only, but maybe the "Consumer IR"), it would be possible to write a driver.

            
Re: hp 82240A Printer - Sacrilege?
Message #3 Posted by Marcus von Cube, Germany on 28 Dec 2007, 3:40 p.m.,
in response to message #2 by Eric Smith

The IR of the printer is a "read only" device. The protocol is so dumb that is has to take care of the fact whether the printer is running on batteries (slower operation) or not. No chances for Irda but if someone can control the transmit LED on a bit basis, there might be a chance.

                  
Re: hp 82240A Printer - Sacrilege?
Message #4 Posted by Eric Smith on 29 Dec 2007, 12:03 a.m.,
in response to message #3 by Marcus von Cube, Germany

That's exactly the point I made. IRDA can't do it, but "Consumer IR" might be able to.

      
Re: hp 82240A Printer - Sacrilege?
Message #5 Posted by James M. Prange (Michigan) on 28 Dec 2007, 6:29 p.m.,
in response to message #1 by Tito de Magalhaes

For information on the IR signals needed to make the 82240A/B printers work, see the HP 82240B Infrared Printer Technical Interfacing Guide.

I expect that you'd probably have to build some custom hardware (and software) to make the printer work from a PC, or else use a connection from a PC to a calculator to tell the calculator to print to the 82240A/B.

The guide is written for the 82240B. For purposes of the signals the printers need, the differences are, first, that the 82240B has both the Roman 8 character set and the modified ECMA Latin No. 1 character set, but the 82240A has only the Roman 8 set, and the commands to switch character sets on the 82240B are ignored by the 82240A. Second, the 82240A will stay powered up for as long as it's turned on and power is available, but, when using only battery power, the 82240B will switch to a low-power mode after about ten minutes of inactivity; the input buffer and modes are preserved, but it won't receive IR.

Regards,
James

Edited: 28 Dec 2007, 6:31 p.m.


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