Hi All,

I spent the better part of three days trying to get our POS app to operate a cash drawer with an Epson thermal receipt printer. Our several installations so far had used Star Printers which are comparatively straight forward in the cash drawer interface. The Epson printer property sheet contains no cash drawer interface properties.

During the last three days, I used several resources, especially the UT for helpful hints. I knew the proper printer codes : ASCII = ESC p 0 25 250, Decimal = 27 112 0 64 240, HEX = 1B 70 00 40 F0

In our print method I included

SET PRINTER ON
??? CHR(27)+CHR(112)+CHR(0)+CHR(64)+CHR(240)
SET PRINTER OFF
SET PRINTER ON

and several other combinations of the above to no avail. From the command window I could send that string and watch the print job on the printer. It would sit there until I closed VFP and then the drawer would dutifully open.

Changing to the 'generic text only driver' allowed me to add the HEX codes to every print job and the drawer did open but then I lost the ability to print the nice receipt, primarily because I could not figure out how to accomodate the variable length for the receipt.

Finally, with the help of Epson tech support I arrived at a suitable compromise. I had called them for help with the OPOS drivers and Application Developers kit that Mark McCasland had suggested. But instead, they showed me how to add a .SEP file to the system32 directory and then point to that .SEP file on the Epson property sheet.

The result is now I get the receipt I wanted AND the cash drawer opens. In fact it opens with every print job whether I need it open or not, but that is better than what I had. So until I can figure out how to gain more control, the solution is the .SEP file containing the following HEX codes:

\H1B\H70\H30\H31\H39

Hope this helps someone in the same boat.

Ken