When printing the screen or running a transparent print job, the printed output may be too small to be useful. There are three ways to increase the size of the printout, all in TinyTERM’s Printer Setup options:

1) Select the “Direct to device” option. This bypasses the Windows printing system entirely, sending the output straight to an LPT or COM port. You may need to check the “Add Form Feed (FF)” box as well, depending on your printer.

This option will often fail on Windows 2000 or XP, as they handle the printer and serial ports differently. Also, most USB printers require a printer driver, so this option will fail with those as well.

2) Check the “Use Printer Fonts” box in TinyTERM 4.13, or the “Bypass Printer Drivers” box in TinyTERM 4.20 and higher. This still uses the Windows printer system to manage the printout, but doesn’t use the driver itself. This works on all versions of Windows, but still fails with most USB printers due to eliminating the required driver.

3) Click the Setup button for the selected printer. This brings up the Page Setup dialog box. In the upper left are “Lines” and “Columns” boxes, both set to 0. This allows Windows and the printer to configure the print size.

A typical page is 66 lines long and 80 columns wide. Set the Lines and Columns accordingly here, and print a test page. If it’s still too small, decrease the number of columns and lines in Page Setup. If the printout comes out too large, increase one or the other. Experiment with the numbers until you find one that works in your environment.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 1st, 2007 at 11:19 am and is filed under Printing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.