Creating dummy ASCII driver for thermal printer (Star TSP600)

[Helge Blischke]

Luis Da Costa wrote:

>> Luis Da Costa wrote:
>>
>> > Hello everyone,
>> >
>> > I am new here, so if this is not the right place to post this please
>> > tell me.
>> >
>> > I bought a thermal Star TSP600 for my POS installation. Normally this
>> > device has a official website (licensed under GPLv2 if I'm not wrong,
>> > which is pretty cool and useful), but it only works (under Gnu/Linux
>> > and Mac, not on Windows) with the USB and Ethernet version... and as
>> > you may already imagine my version is a Serial one.
>> >
>> > Long story short. After a long time understanding how all of this
>> > should work, I've found a way to print. Simply by doing this :
>> >
>> > echo "Hello World" >> /dev/ttyUSB0
>> >
>> > It works nice (with no accents as expected) but this isn't a solution
>> > for a POS installation since I need the software (proprietary) to work
>> > with this printer (by using Cups as you may already understood).
>> >
>> > Under Fedora 18 I've managed to make it print something under cups
>> > using one of those generic drivers : - PostScript
>> > - Raw Queue
>> > - Others from other printers randomly chosen.
>> >
>> > After installing them with one of the generic drivers, I've tested with
>> > gedit and it would print, sometimes slowly, sometimes faster, but in
>> > all the cases I couldn't even understand what was printed (the best I
>> > got was one of the drivers that printed in big fonts all the settings
>> > used for printing like the font used, the size used etc..).
>> >
>> > So my question is (as I know programming, and need to have this printer
>> > working until the end of this month, and I am trying to not use
>> > Windows, since it works in there perfectly), is it possible to create a
>> > dummy driver for this kind of situations ? Or is it possible to edit
>> > the original ppd from this printer in order to add the serial support ?
>> >
>> > If yes, could anyone help me do this ? (Or just help me find a better
>> > solution that would work under cups in order for the POS software to
>> > recognize the printer and use it).
>> >
>> > Thanks in Advance for all the help. And sorry for my horrible English.
>> >
>> > Best Regards,
>> > Luis Da Costa
>>
>> Look at
>> http://www.starasia.com/productshow.asp?id=82
>> for Linux drivers.
>>
>> Helge
>>
> 
> 
> Hi Helge,
> 
> Thanks for the help. But as I already said, those drivers are only for the
> Ethernet and USB version and I've got a Parallel/Serial version which is
> not compactible. I've already tried those drivers and they give me
> problems with the rasterstar filter, and when they don't, they simply
> don't print...
> 
> I have better results with the Raw Queue drivers that with those ones :S
> 
> Thanks in Advance,
> Luis Da Costa

The driver(s) are independent of the backend used. For your serial version 
you need to use the serial backend of CUPS. But it seems your serial 
connection needs to be capable of transferring 8-bit binary data.

Helge