Minimal...

[Guest]

If I were to use old hardware (just to get it out of the way), and MS-DOS... how hard would it be to setup a printer (receipt or page-fed dot matrix)... keyboard wedge scanner... cash drawer... etc?

Any success stories on this topic or How-To?

[Guest]

If I were to use old hardware (just to get it out of the way), and MS-DOS... how hard would it be to setup a printer (receipt or page-fed dot matrix)... keyboard wedge scanner... cash drawer... etc?

Any success stories on this topic or How-To?

It would be very easy if the printers use a parrell connection
keyboard wedge scanner - Just plug it in and it will go
Cash Draw - You require an reciept printer.

[Dale Harris]

Guest,

The POS program is written in QuickBASIC 7.1 which means that it is from the era of the equipment you are describing. In other words, it is sometimes easier to get the program to work with older equiment than with new stuff. It will work much better with printers that use a parallel printer port than a USB port. A Windows '98 computer, or a straight DOS computer will never have the problem that Windows XP occasionally has with running 8 or 16 bit software.

Plus one of the reasons that I choose to write the program in QuickBASIC 7.1 is that I realized that the program would be used all over the earth including many places where new computers would be unavailable or prohibitively expensive for the small shop owner, or even too expensive in many places here. After all what would be the point of free software if it needs a $1500 brand new computer to run?

I ain't Microsoft and the program ain't Halo, I am not trying to sell either the software or to make you purchase a new computer.

This program is designed to operate really great on equipment that most folks are throwing away. So it is entirely possible to not only get this software for free but also get the computer to run it on for free also. Every day thousands of computers that will run this program are thrown away.

As far as other hardware is concerned just stay away from stuff that hooks up to the computer's serial port and you should be fine.

For specifics on hardware read this http://keyhut.com/posystem.htm

[ibmsystems]

lol i have a pic of some one running dhpos on this little tandy computer with a orange and black screen with a barcode scanner and a cash drawer and there doing fine i think dhpos is meant to run on "Minimal" hardware

[Guest]

None of those devices require drivers and such under MS-DOS? That's what I'm mainly concerned about, I've never really worked with DOS a whole lot in terms as a primary operating system, it's all been graphical.

[Dale Harris]

Guest,

Pretty much no.

With almost all parallel port receipt printers all you have to do is to plug it in and turn it on. Since the cash drawer plugs into the printer, if the printer works the cash drawer will work assuming that you have the "open cash drawer" control code for the printer. You can find a whole bunch of them here http://keyhut.com/popopen.htm so I would purchase one of the printers listed on that page.

A "keyboard wedge" or USB scanner will fool your computer into thinking that the scanner input is coming from the keyboard so no drivers will be needed their either. However you will need to read the scanner's manual to find out how to set the scanners termination character to [ENTER]. You usually do this just by scanning a special barcode in the scanner manual.

[ibmsystems]

Dale And Guest

To set a <ENTER> Code termination code on your barcode scanner you can make a barcode with the following test

Code: Select all

<terminate-data-after-scan>

That works with all barcode scanners