Notes
On
Commodore
BASIC
If
you're
not
using a commercial
program,
you
have
to
use a
programming
language
to
communicate
with
your
printer. Since
BASIC
is
the
most
popular
programming
language,
we're
using it
in this manual to
demonstrate
the
MPS
1200's features.
The
MPS
1200
works
just
as
well
with
other
high-level languages such
as
C
or
PASCAL. Simply send the same ASCII
or
PET
ASCII codes
with
whatever
print
statements
your
language uses.
There
are
many
different versions
of
BASIC
around.
The
pro-
grams to
come
in this manual illustrating
how
to
use the
Commo-
dore
MPS
1200
printer's
features are
written
in (not surprisingly)
Commodore
BASIC. We'll go
over
a few
commands
in the next
couple
of
pages so
you're
familiar
with
Commodore
BASIC
as
it
relates to printers.
Commodore
BASIC
does
not
use the
LPRINT
statement,
which
is
used in
many
other
BASICs. Instead, it uses the
OPEN,
PRINT#
and
CLOSE
commands.
The
OPEN
statement allows
your
computer
to access devices such
as
disk drives,
monitor
screens and, for
our
purposes, printers.
Add
the
OPEN
statement
at the beginning
of
a
program
to enable
communication
with
the printer.
The
word
OPEN
is
followed
by
a
logical file
number,
which
is
the
number
to
which
all other BASIC
statements will refer.
This
number
can be
from
1 to 255.
The
second
number
after the file
number
is
the device
number.
The
device
number
for the
printer
can be either 4
or
5.
So, a line such
as
open
1,4
opens a channel
with
the file
number
1 to use the printer, assuming
the device select
switch
is
set to device
4.
There
can be a
third
number,
known
as
a
secondary
address,
which
will be discussed shortly.
Any file that
you
open
must
be closed
when
you're
done with it.
The
command
for this
is
straight-forward
enough-the
CL()S
I·:
command.
2-5
To Next Page
Loading...
