The TM-T80 has some features that do not occur in normal printers, and Windows does not provide any standard way to access these features. To make these featrues accessable from Visual Basic, the driver has assigned special meaning to some of the characters between 128 and 160 (80H to 9FH). When the application tries to print one of these characters, the driver will replace the character with the appropriate command. These characters have to be sent using one of the printer fonts not a TrueType font.
This is a table of the characters that have special meaning to the TM-T80 driver and the actions that they cause.
Character
Hex Decimal Function
81 129 24 ms pulse to drawer 1
82 130 50 ms pulse to drawer 1
83 131 74 ms pulse to drawer 1
84 132 100 ms pulse to drawer 1
85 133 124 ms pulse to drawer 1
89 137 24 ms pulse to drawer 2
8A 138 50 ms pulse to drawer 2
8B 139 74 ms pulse to drawer 2
8C 140 100 ms pulse to drawer 2
8D 141 124 ms pulse to drawer 2
98 152 select no HRI with bar code
99 153 select Font A HRI above bar code
9a 154 select Font A HRI below bar code
9b 155 select Font B HRI above bar code
9c 156 select Font B HRI below bar code
Example 1:
PRINT #1, chr$(130);
causes a 50 ms pulse to be sent to open cash drawer 1
Example 2:
PRINT #1, chr$(154);
causes any subsequent bar codes to be printed with Font A HRI characters below the bar code
Printing TrueType fonts or graphics to a printer with a serial interface can be quite slow.
Because of the way the th TM-T80 works it will not be possible to mix printer fonts with TrueType fonts or graphics on the same line. They can both be used on the same receipt but the printer fonts must not overlap or be printed on the same line as TrueType fonts or graphics.