Garbled Printing on Epson LQ-1070+ under OS/2

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Last update: 13th February, 1996

Symptoms

The printer had always worked perfectly under DOS and Windows. After installing OS/2, and only when printing under OS/2, it would print one printhead pass correctly and then all following passes would consist of random dots and lines. Reverting to DOS or Windows, it would again work perfectly.

Hardware

The Epson LQ-1070+ is a wide carriage 24-pin dot-matrix printer which uses the Epson ESC/P2 (tm) technology. The printer cabling (parallel) from the computer went first to a switchable splitter box, then either to an Epsom EX-1000 or to the LQ-1070+. The EX-1000 was not affected, even though it too was being driven through a total of ten metres of cable.

Problem

The problem was related to cable length and/or poor quality cable. Total cable length was ten metres (2 x 5m).

Procedure

Following diagnosis, the 5 metre cable from the computer to the switch box was replaced with a high quality 5 metre double-screened, low capacity cable. The 5 metre cable from the switch box to the printer was replaced with a high quality 1 metre double-screened cable.

Notes

The procedure provided an immediate fix and there has been no further trouble whatsoever.

John Warbey