Quote:
Originally posted by pirate
... when I try to print something, it starts to print, but instead of what it needs to print, it prints a whole lot of little characters that look like tiny little emoticons all over the page, eventually it will print a letter or a number here and there. What can it be?
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Its printing the ASCII characters for one, two, seven, etc. In simple ASCII mode, the printer receives the number 41h and prints capital A. It receives 31h (decimal 49) and prints the number 1. But for printing enhancements such as boldface, fonts, underscore, and graphical items, then the computer must sent complex codes to the printer such as 27, 42, 6, 84. What happens when the first character (27) does not get sent? Instead of responding to a command, the printer thinks this is more ASCII and prints asterick, black spade, and capital T.
OK. So why is your printer doing this. One reason is that the data in the printer buffer (also called Print Manager) is corrupted. As soon as you start the printer, then it starts printing the last file it tried to print previously. But that data is corrupted. So you stop the printer. Next time it tries to print same data all over again.
Clear out all waiting jobs in the printer buffer. IOW go to Print Manager and delete all jobs. Then have the printer on since those jobs will not be deleted unless it can print one character to the printer.
Now you have a strange character in the printer. Suppose it was 27. Then no matter what you try to print afterwards, the printer thinks that data is really the rest of a command. You must delete that wayward 27 - turn the printer off by removing power cord.
Now that you have killed all demons, maybe you can print. However there is one other possible problem. Some hardware on power on may issue extraneous noise to the printer - especially if using a parallel (Centronix) port or serial (RS-232) port. The printer may think this is a data character and store it like it did the previous 27. And so it goes. You learn by understanding how these things work - and then use trial and error to see how they work in your world. Enjoy all the killing and deleting.