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PM43 fonts vs PM4i

I was at a customer site replacing some old Intermec PM4i printers with the PM43s and ran into a font issue. Here’s the bottom part of their label printed on a PM4i printer:

And this is what printed on the PM43:

The character size is looks about the same, but the kerning (spacing between characters) is different, it’s most obvious when you look at the numbers 716 in the drawing number. The result was that the drawing number field ran into the order number field. The solution to this was to turn on legacy mode. This isn’t the old legacy mode which enabled the old Bitstream fonts that were included with some older Intermec printers, but it does substitute fonts (font aliasing) to overcome some of these issues. I enabled legacy mode from the front panel menu under Settings, (down arrow to display the next selection) Languages, IPL, Print Quality, then enabled Legacy Mode. The PM43 then printed this:

I have to give credit to the Honeywell software guys who implemented this feature.

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Compact Flash card compatibility with PX4, PF4, and PD42 printers

I’ve noticed that a significant number of CF cards purchased over the last few years don’t always work with Intermec printers. This seems to be a recent problem, it may be due to poor quality manufacturing or counterfeit chips.

CF cards are used to upgrade firmware or to provide the printer additional storage space, they’re very useful. The printers have a size limit for CF cards of 2 GB; you should use the smallest one that will do the job, smaller cards work faster.

If you come across a CF card that doesn’t work you can try to fix it by formatting the card  inside the printer.

Put the CF card into the printer and use a Telnet program (HyperTerm, Putty, etc.) and connect to the printer’s IP address on port 9100. Note that this procedure only works when the printer is in Direct Protocol or Fingerprint. If you’re running IPL you’ll need to temporarily run one of these.

Once connected type VERBON and press enter. You should see an OK prompt from the printer. Next, use the FILES command to list any files on the CF card:

Note that the CF card is named “card1:” and must be enclosed in quotes.

First, try to format the CF card using the standard FORMAT command:

FORMAT “card1:”

This will only take a few seconds and it will erase any data on the CF card.

Copy a file from the C: drive to the CF card to test if it’s now usable:

COPY “STDIO”,”card1:STDIO”

If that doesn’t work, try a low level format command:

FORMAT “card1:”,A

This takes a minute and a half on a 64 MB card; longer with bigger cards. Now try copying a file over. It that doesn’t work do another low level format while changing the sector size:

FORMAT “card1:”,500,256,A

Note that this changes the default sector size from 512 bytes to 256 and increases the number of files that can be stored on the card from 208, the default value, to 500.  This is useful if you are storing a lot of small files on the card.

If the low level format doesn’t work, buy another CF card. I find that I’ve had the best luck with San Disk cards.

 

 

 

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IPL on a PX series vs a PM series, label length

IPL (Intermec Printer Language) never specified the length of a label, it relied on the user to format the data properly; if you went over the edge, it would happily print on the next label.

The new PM series printers behave differently. When you define a label size image memory is allocated based on those settings. Anything that falls outside those limits will get chopped off. IPL is now a Fingerprint program that runs on the PM43 so there is a conflict between the two languages on this label size issue.

Here’s the same data sent to a PX (top) and a PM printer (bottom):

This usually won’t be a problem if your labels are set up correctly and don’t run over the edge of the label. However, there’s an IPL command (<SI> L) that’s misnamed “Maximum Label Length” that sets the label length on the  PM and PC series running IPL. To quote from the IPL reference manual “Notes: The printer uses this number for detecting media faults. It does not use this
number to limit the image size of a format on the label.”

I think mapping this configuration command to set the label length is a bug, but I understand how this could happen. They way to get around this is to implement the “Ignore IPL” commands feature in the PM43.

To get the printer to ignore an IPL command you have to turn on this feature; the easiest way is through the web interface. Sign in as “itadmin” using “pass” as the password and click on the Configure tab, then the Languages link on the left, then IPL, and you’ll see the Commands Ignore pull down in the General Settings:

Enable Commands Ignore and press the Save button.

You can enable this from the front panel menu too. Go into Settings, down arrow to Languages, General Settings,  then enable Commands Ignore.

Enabling this will cause the printer to ignore these commands:

<SI> d  dark adjust

<SI>g media sensitivity

<SI>c cutter enable/disable

<SI>D end of print skip distance

<SI>F top of form set

<SI>f label rest point

<SI>L maximum label length

<SI>R label retract enable

<SI>r retract distance

<SI>t self strip enable/disable

<SI>W set label width

<SI>X label origin, X Y adjust

These commands are contained in a file named IGNCMDS.CFG in the /home/user/config/ipl folder. You can add any SI command you want ignored here, or you can delete the command that you still want the printer to respond to. Copy this file to your PC using and FTP client, edit it, then copy if back to the same folder.

Note: Loftware normally sent out the maximum label length configuration of 5 inches (<SI>L1000) with their compiled files or Print Server product when sending data to IPL printers. If you see your label length being reset to 5 inches, it’s likely that Lofware is the source of this IPL data string.