HP-41 infrared module does not support barcode printing
Sylvain said lately in another thread.
This leads to the question, what he meant by 'support'. Is the 82242A Infrared Printer Module too filigree, too fragile or too poor to take the burden of barcode printing? That would be 'support' in the sense of
je ne supporte pas du tout les voyages. Or is it just the lack of a "Bar-Code Input" option as it offers the 82162A? So the show stopper is rather the 82240A/B printer not the IR module?
In short: virtually it works but I never tried with real devices (some just don't exist in haptic reality).
For quite some time
Christoph's 82240B IR printer simulation serves as target system for my "
IL-to-IR bridge" what together acts as an HP-82162A, graphics and
barcode included. This is why I conclude a real IR printer may print barcodes the same way or at least similar as an 82162A printer. For a (virtual) test I replaced in PRBC program (see Plotter ROM manual section 7) the BCO function since it does not cooperate with the IR printer module. Summary: it works as supposed, alas much slower than expected.
The program (using Plotter ROM, Extended IO, IR Printer, IR Printer Module):
- Code: Select all
01▶LBL "PBCIR"
CF 23 "NAME?" AON
STOP AOFF FC?C 23 RTN
ASTO 12 VIEW 12 RCL 12
1,1 SF 25 PINIT FIX 0
CF 29
17▶LBL 01
"ROW: " ARCL X ACA
ADV BCP STO 11 R^
CHS SF 20 0 X<>FIO
SIGN SF 19 XEQ 03
32▶LBL 02
ENTER^ ATOXX X<>FIO
CLX 7
38▶LBL 03
15 FS?C IND Y GTO 04
16 FS? 20 SIGN *
GTO 06
47▶LBL 04
FS?C 20 GTO 05 SF 20
240 XEQ 11 GTO 06
54▶LBL 11
SIGN CLX 68 X<> L
59▶LBL 12
ACCOL DSE L GTO 12
RDN ADV RTN
66▶LBL 05
17 *
69▶LBL 06
XEQ 11 DSE X GTO 03
X=0? GTO 03 RDN
FS?C 19 RTN ISG X
X<0? GTO 02 SF 01
SIGN SF 19 XEQ 03 ADV
ADV RCL 12 RCL 11
X≠0? GTO 01 BEEP
.END.
The result (reduced by half -- exactly 50%, resized, not resampled so white and narrow black bars are 2 pixels in width and big black bars 4 pixels -- rearranged):
![PBCIR.png](./download/file.php?id=238&sid=b4d191f4f78ab8ca81b14556bf91433b)
- Simple example
- PBCIR.png (275 Bytes) Viewed 45911 times
This output works with either the
"Software Decoder for HP-41 Barcodes" of M. Hepperle (set threshold to 150),
or the
"Software Defined Wand", an inclosure of my
NutEm/PC.
Edit: supplemented information about
NutEm/PC that meanwhile comes with a SDW ("Software Defined Wand") which works directly with the emulated HP41 w/o intermediate processing.