I still am not having any luck. I talked with the manufacturer and the tech support is new to the serial capabilities of the printer so they aren't able to give me much info. For some reason I can't help but think I have the circuit hooked up wrong. I even tried hooking it up using one of the cables supplied with the printer which has an HIN232 chip in it. I am trying inverted and true levels of communicating and neither seems to be doing anything for me. I am not sure if there are start and end of line commands I need to include in my string of serial data or not. I'm pretty much taking stabs in the dark right now. I even tried switching the way I am communicating with the printer by trying different pins on my picaxe. I tried sertxd, serout, and hserout all with no luck. I am sending a command to initialize the printer, and then I am just trying to do a simple line feed. If anyone has any suggestions I am not sure what direction to go in next. Here is the exact program I am downloading and after that are the command codes I got from the printer manufacturer, in case that will help anyone with suggestions.
With this code I believe I am initializing the printer and doing a pause just to make sure the printer has time to initialize and then do a line feed.
main:
SEROUT b.7,n9600_8,($1b,$40)
pause 2000
SEROUT b.7, n9600_8, (lf,lf)
goto main
here is the command set from ICT
Command table
HEX ASCII Description
$00 NUL Prints in small characters
$01 SOH Prints in double width
$02 STX Prints in double height
$03 ETX Expanded printing
$0A LF Forward feeds one line
$0B VT Forward feeds
line
$0D CR Prints line buffer
$0E SO Prints in double width
$0F SI Set CRLF mode
$14 DC4 Cancel 0xE command.
$18 CAN Cancel print data
$1B $40 ESC @ Initialize the printer
$1B $49 ESC I Selects Font A
(dd)$1B $4D (dd) ESC M Writes value(dd) in print mode
$1B $4E ESC N Sets normal mode printing
$1B $51 ESC Q Enable underline.
$1B $68 ESC h Select Font B
$1B $6D ESC m Transmits print mode in serial
$1B $71 ESC q Disable underline.
$1B $F0 ESC {} Transmission of printer real time clock
$1B $F1 ESC {} Setting of printer real time clock