How can I make my PC print to HP82240B?

[Danny Elfman]

I got an infrared adaptor, a program to emulate a serial port for the adapter and I installed some printer drivers try to print, but the printer didn't respond at all. Anyone know if it's possible to print files from a PC to the 82240B?

[bill]

Are you, by any chance, the musical composer?

[Eric Smith]

The 82440 printers don't use IRDA protocol, so in general a PC can't talk to them.

[James M. Prange (Michigan)]

I wouldn't entirely rule it out, but the 82240 printers (and perhaps earlier infrared models?) use a special character encoding, including four error-correction bits with each (8-bit) data byte. See: http://www.hpcalc.org/search.php?query=82240B+technical for the details.

Regards,
James

[Eric Smith]

While it's obviously possible to somehow interface a PC to an 82440, there is no easy way to do it. Standard PC infrared ports and infrared adapters speak IRDA protocol, which cannot by any stretch of the imagination work with the 82440.

Some built-in PC infrared ports (mostly in laptops) have a "consumer IR" mode that is intended to let them act as a remote control for consumer electronics. In principle those could send to the 82440, but as far as I know, no software to do that has ever been published.

[James M. Prange (Michigan)]

Agreed; I don't know of any "easy" way to do it. Perhaps the least painful way would be to connect a calculator to the PC, and with the calculator in server mode, send it data and tell it to print it via IR. In other words, use the calculator as an RS-232/"RedEye" IR adapter.

I've heard of relatively simple RS-232/"Serial IR" (SIR) converters that can be used for communicating with the 48 series for transfers via IR, but I have my doubts about the feasibility of getting them to send in the RedEye encoding for the 82240 printers. Certainly it would be possible to make the hardware/software to do it, but it wouldn't be an "off the shelf" solution.

Regards,
James

[Gerson W. Barbosa]

At least for the HP-95LX/100LX (and 200LX), it has been published a shareware that prints text or data from the palmtop to the HP 82240B (IR-Print/SM):

http://www.rundel.net/palmtop/hp200/shareware.htm

There is also a DOS freeware version at the site, IR-Print/DOS, but this may run only on those early HP palmtops.

[Christoph Giesselink]

I only know it for the 95LX, but this model has some special I/O registers generating the necessary pulse packets with the correct timing. These registers are missing on a normal PC.

I don't know a method with standard PC components using the HP82240B printer. My solution in this case would be a self programmed microcontroller converting the data from serial to the HP secific redeye format.

Cheers

Christoph