Citizen Printer

How do I print thermal receipts?

I have an Epson TM-T88IV thermal receipt printer. I want to use it to print my own receipts, but I can't seem to figure out how to. I have 3 different PCs I could use for it. One using XP, one using Vista (32-bit), and one using Windows 7 Home Premium. I only have the printer and a couple cables. One cable won't fit any of my PCs (LPT1 cable, I think, but the end that fits the PC, also fits the printer, the other end doesn't fit anything I know of), but I had a usb adapter that adapts usb to the phone jack on the back of the printer. With this cable, the XP PC recognizes it as an "Unknown Device", and says it's installed, but does not install a driver for it. Is there a program I can download to do this? How do I get the drivers installed for it? I only need a very simple receipt. Nothing fancy. And, no, I'm not trying to rip anyone off... put simply, it would make my job A LOT easier. Thanks in advance for any help! My old XP computer does have an LPT1 printer port. The problem is that the cable has two different ends. Both the output from the PC and the input on the printer are the same type of plug. So the cable will plug into either the PC or the printer, but not both. I may be able to remedy this with a cable from office depot or something, but I'm really not trying to spend any money on this setup. I'm only borrowing the printer.

Public Comments

So if all of your computers have USB ports but no serial or parallel ports for the printer, there is no way to connect them. Its possible that your thermal printer is older and wont operate on any current machine. You will need a thermal printer with a USB connection or, if they make them, a hub like device that will let you plug the printer into it using the cable you have and connecting to the computers using a USB cable.
Those are great little printers. If the cable connector is the same on both the computer and printer, then the printer's interface is "serial", not "parallel". Here is a link to show a serial cable connector: http://www.pt-solutions.com/Broker/Images/BELC-R2045.jpg This link shows what a parallel printer cable looks like: http://www.watware.com/esale/ParallelPrinterCableCentronics.jpg You can see where the one end is capable of plugging into both the computer and printer, but the other end is actually the printer end that will plug into a true parallel printer interface. I suspect this is the cable you have. Since you have a parallel port (LPT1) on one of your computers, then you probably have a 9-pin serial port, as shown in this link: http://rocky.digikey.com/weblib/Assmann/Web%20Photos/AK149-3-R,%20AK150-3-R,%20AK128-.25,%20AK128-.25-R.jpg which is a 9-pin to 25-pin serial cable. It sounds like the printer has a serial interface, not a parallel one. This printer can be ordered with any number of interface types, but usually only has the one that it comes with, see brochure: http://pos.epson.com/pos/pdf/tmt88iv_ds.pdf but it sounds like you also have a ethernet/network port on the printer (the phone jack type connector you spoke of, is not really a phone jack, but a ethernet network jack.) So, ideally you'll need to get a serial I/F cable like this one: http://rocky.digikey.com/weblib/Assmann/Web%20Photos/AK149-3-R,%20AK150-3-R,%20AK128-.25,%20AK128-.25-R.jpg in order to get it to work. Download and install the correct drivers for the operating system on the computer you decide to use. You can get USB to serial adapters: http://www.usbgear.com/usb-serial.html or USB to ethernet adapters: http://www.nextag.com/ethernet-to-usb-printer-adapter/products-html Best of luck.