>>It may be that the printer is setup for receiving ascii text characters, but Windows is sending graphics stuff. If that's the case, you'll need to set the printer up in graphics mode. Sometimes there's a dipswitch setting in the hardware which can accomplish this. For more flexibility, there is generally a control sequence (and ESC (char (27)) and then another character) used to switch modes. These can be sent to the printer with the ??? command.
>
>DM printers are always set for text, it's the responsibility of the software to send an escape sequence to initiate graphic mode for the commands that follow.

Dragan,
You are correct (of course *grin*). The DIP switches on the DFX8000 are used (amongst other things) to switch the printer between Epson and IBM compatibility mode. But, either way it is still text based.

And, trying to query that mode from within Windows would be most unfruitful.

Nadya, did you ever get the configuration page to print (while trying to debug other code)? Did it have anything about Epson or IBM mode? I guess that setting is not relevant if you go the text based route, unless you need to put bold faced commands or use the none default printer fonts (such as compressed).