why is Epson Homewriter 10 printer printing only lower case with VIC-20?

[newTIboyRob]

Just as the thread title asks... dug up my Epson Homewriter 10 printer (could not find any online manuals) and got only a semi-successful result. It did print the signals from my VIC-20, whose screen as you know is default to all caps... yet on the printer, the printout appears only in lower case.  Any explanation and fix here?

[+Bruce-Robert Pocock]

Not sure of that precise model, but…

 

A lot of IEC printers default to lower-case mode (hit C= + Shift to switch fonts on the screen to match)

 

If you're printing from BASIC or so, you may be able to send CHR$(147) or CHR$(14) to toggle the printer's character case mode, but that does depend on the printer model and whether it recognizes PETSCII.

If it does not know PETSCII, you may have to translate to ASCII yourself. The biggest, most obvious change is that PETSCII's lower-case and upper-case are the opposite of ASCII's.

petscii'S caps AND LOWER-CASE ARE THE INVERSE OF ascii'S BECAUSE THE 80'S WERE WEIRD

 

This might work, if it does take PETSCII. The second example will show off if it just wanted ASCII to begin with.
 

READY.
NEW

READY.
10 OPEN4,4
20 PRINT#4,CHR$(147);"ALL CAPS AND GRAPHICS"
30 PRINT#4,CHR$(14);"CAPS AND LOWERCASE"
40 CLOSE4:END
RUN

READY.
PRINT CHR$(14)

ready.
new

ready.
10 open4,4
20 print#4,"tHIS WILL LOOK NORMAL ON AN ascii PRINTER."
30 print#4,"pROBABLY UNDERSCORE: ← AND CARET: ↑"
40 close4:end
run

ready.

[newTIboyRob]

I was just about to report back with the same information.  In basic, I simply pressed SHIFT and Commodore keys simultaneously which puts you into text mode, essentially typewriter mode. Typed the basic program line numbers and all while still in lower case, but when statements that had a combo came around, e.g. "This is a TEST"... it printed with the proper mix of lower case and upper case letters.

 

Thanks for replying though Bruce!