hi. i have been trying to print to my epson tm-u950 POS printer which i connected to com2 (and com1 just to check if it will work there) and failed to print everytime. these are what i did (all in msdos622 command prompt): 1. mode com2: baud=9600 data=8 parity=n stop=1 2. mode lpt1:=com2: 3. tried to print by: a. typing 'dir *.* >prn' b. or, running foxpro 2.5 and then printing from there. i can sense that the printer is connected because if i turn it off, DOS will display an error message. if it's on, there's no such message. however, nothing's printed. h-e-l-p.

1) Have you tried 2 stop bits? The start and stop bits is just timing: nothing is actually transmitted. You can have 1, 1.5 or 2 stop bits. Epson recommends 1 but 2 works too. 2) Are there any switches on the printer that set the baud rate? 3) I'm not familiar with this printer - is there a test mode which will print the internal settings? On my FX850, it is switch the printer off, hold down the FF button, switch on the printer and then wait for it to print before releasing the FF button. 4) You may need to loopback 4&5 and 6&20. These are hardware control signals for DSR, DTR, CTS and RTS (not respectively). It is possible that your PC is waiting for a CTS before it transmits and the printer is not raising the signal. Check your mode command. Does it have an odsr option? Try playing with odsr, octs, dtr, idsr and rts if it does. Your printer may magically come to life.

thanks cup. 1. i tried 2 stop bits. didn't work. :( 2. there's this pair of dip switches at the bottom of the printer. i didn't bother to change the baud rate (maybe i should). i matched the current setting with what's in the manual and set the MODE parameters accordingly. nothing still worked. 3. the funny thing about this is that if i try to do the same things (i did in dos which didn't work) in windows 98, it would work ONLY WHEN i print a test page first. 4. i tried the test page trick. it prints 100% of the time. 5. maybe i should try your last suggestion which at the moment is still too cryptic to me. well, just the same, thank you very much.