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Writing an RFID tag with Direct Protocol

I recently had to send a customer a Direct Protocol sample that wrote to an RFID tag and printed a bar code. The sample in the manual didn’t work, but this one does:

INPUT ON

REM BAR CODE
PP168,204:AN7
BARSET “CODE39”,8,3,1,102
PB “1234567890”

REM HUMAN READABLE
PP244,113:NASC 8
FT “Univers”
FONTSIZE 24
FONTSLANT 0
PT “1234567890”

REM RFID
TAGFIELD “@ID”,4,10
TAGFORMAT “ASCII”
TAGWRITE “1234567890”

PF

Send this to an RFID equipped PM43 and a bar code with human readable text will print, and an RFID tag will be written with the same values.

NOTE: If you cut and paste this code, your browser may turn the standard double quotation marks (hex 22) into curly open and close quotation marks (“”). The printer won’t like this, so make sure that you use standard double quotes.

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PC43, PC23 and 802.11 Roaming

A customer called in with an issue with his PC43T that had a wireless card installed. He had tested it in his conference room without issue but when he took it out to his warehouse it wouldn’t connect to his wireless network, even though he was only 20 feet from an access point.

The issue was roaming; it’s off by default on the PC series printer. You can get to the roaming setting through the web interface (Communications, Wireless 802.11) or through the front panel. There are four settings; set it to 1 and the printer is most willing to roam, 2 less so, and 3 less than that.

Once roaming was enabled, my customer’s printer worked as expected.

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Replacing an Intermec PC43T or PC43D printhead

This one bit me, so here’s a tip on replacing an Intermec PC43 printhead.

The printhead comes out very easily, you just move the blue catches on each side outward and it pops right out out.

There’s one connector that attaches the printhead to the printer and you need to remove that. The thing that bit me was getting the replacement printhead inserted properly. This is a side view of a correctly placed printhead:

What is critical here is that the body of the printhead has to be positioned inside the gap of the two plastic holders. A more obvious photo of one holder:

I would always line up the printhead with the guide posts and would miss getting the printhead inside of the gap.

If you get the printhead inside the plastic holders the guide posts will automatically line up. Press the printhead up against the springs until it clicks. Close the printhead assembly. If it’s difficult to manually pull on the label, you’ve done it correctly. If the label moves easily, you’ve missed the plastic holders; try again.

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PC43 USB to serial adapter

I recently ordered a USB to serial adapter for a Honeywell PC43 printer and was told that it had been obsoleted without a replacement. I confirmed this with tech support but the marketing department says that the part is still valid.  In any case nobody has this adapter in stock and until this is straightened out there is another USB adapter that works.

I plugged in one of the old cables (part # 203-182-100) into my PC and saw that is used an FTDI driver. I found this cable on Amazon that used the FTDI chip set , plugged it into my PC43 and it worked.

If Honeywell does continue to supply 203-182-100 you are probably better off buying from them for support reasons, but this cable does work in the interim.

UPDATE 7/27/18:  Honeywell has fixed this issue and this cable is now available from them.