I have a nursing home client that wants to have a nurse call system printer to print alerts when a resident pushes the "Panic Button", so the aide can see when the call came in, in case the pager fails. Also its a good record. Problem is, everyone just says "use a parallel printer". They had an Oki 80 char that just croaked. I am thinking that an old call accounting printer used to print SMDR port would be just the ticket. Only need 40 char. I'd like it as quiet as possible (for a matrix, not thermal) and the ability to read the line just printed. (If the carriage has to rotate and then can rotate back that is acceptable, but prefer ability to read direcly the last printed line without doing it. I have driven myself crazy looking at used printers on ebay and not knowing the specs, and not being able to try it myself, I'm hoping one of you guys can give me your thoughts. Could be a POS printer, I suppose or credit card printer, so long as there is no FFeed after printing, and no auto eject, and no tear off, just a straight logger like we all remember so well...... Thanks to all (My first post here) -Rich Barnaby
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Most of these systems output their data in serial form, so a parallel printer won't help too much. If the nurse call system you are using has a 50 pin jack, like the ones commonly found on pc's you're in business. Otherwise, you'll need a serial printer- hard to find and even harder to live with.
An alternative may be to use any old pc running Windows 95 or 98, and connect to a serial port with Hyperterminal. A common Hyperterminal session will scroll 500 lines of text and can be logged and printed if need be from any pc based printer.
Sometimes the thoughts in my head get so bored, they go for a stroll through my mouth. This is rarely a good thing.
jbean3329 is right. A parallel printer will never do the job. Those oki printers people refer to, are probably models that carry both a parallel interface and a serial interface, and you can set the serial mode by playing with dip switches. It is the only way smdr will display...other than that, your other option is hyperterminal, just as jbean3329 said.
Okidata Microline Turbo 321 9-pin Dot Matrix Printer. Probably one of the best modern dot matrix printers going. It has 2 expansion slots in the back where you can plug in whatever interface you want. I know that USB, RS-232C, and Paralell are available.
