Printing on CD-i Players

You can print text or graphics from any CD-i player.



• On consumer players, you must print to the serial /t2 port on the back of the player. If you want to print to a parallel printer, you will need to use a serial->parallel converter. Consult the cables page for the proper printing cable pinouts.

• On professional players, you can print to any of the serial ports(/t2,/t3, or /t4), or the parallel port(/p). Printing to the parallel port is significantly faster than the serial method.

• There is a freeware subroutine in the OS9 file section, cdi_mmpr, which will do basic printing chores. For more sophisticated printing options, the Printer Manager Plug-in is required.

• There is also a way to print files without either of the subroutines above. This method does not have any of the error condition checking that cdi_mmpr or the Printer Manager plugin possess. The steps to follow are thus:
  1. Create your output print file with whatever text or graphics program you like on your PC.
     
  2. Be sure you have the printer drivers installed for the destination printer. Choose that printer, but print to a file, e.g. "stuff.txt".
     
  3. In order to print the file on a CD-i player you will need to use the "copy" command in OS9. The copy command does not alter the file in any way, so text files must have proper line terminations to print correctly.
     
  4. Use the "Call" command in MediaMogul to load copy. Use the "filename" as the parameter of the copy call.
     
  5. A simple script might look like this:
     
     00:00 Call /h0/cmds/copy stuff.txt /t2
     
     
  6. Beware of trying to print large graphics files serially. These will take a long time to print.