Comments on: Zebra printers on an iSeries platform http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/zebra-printers-on-an-iseries-platform/ Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:51:37 +0000 hourly 1 By: woodengineer http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/zebra-printers-on-an-iseries-platform/#comment-55326 woodengineer Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:07:54 +0000 #comment-55326 From one old goat to another . . . In a former life I connected a Zebra printer to our AS/400. Believe it or not but it was a twin-ax connection. Since ZPL is just a string of characters we configured the Zebra as a character printer, such as an Epson 850. It can be any character-based printer your system supports. Our spool file contained just the ZPL code. Since the ZPL code totally controls the behavior of the Zebra be sure that the AS/400 inserts no forms control characters into your spool file.
You can experiment with ZPL directly from your PC by keying commands into a text file and sending it to the printer. Once the text file is working reasonable well, write an RPG program that generates the same code and you’ll be good to go.

We are doing something very similar today with a DataMax printer which is connected via a client access session. No reason you could not use Zebra’s version of a JetDirect box to connect via TCP/IP.

Remember, treat the printer as a simple character printer. That was the key in our case.

The T.L. Ashford software package can do a lot of this work for you. It makes designing a bar coded label pretty easy.

Hope this helps.

]]> By: ettenips http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/zebra-printers-on-an-iseries-platform/#comment-55249 ettenips Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:03:34 +0000 #comment-55249 Hi oldGoat,

could you explain what is defined on your AS400 and what is defined on the PC ? how do you do the link between your zebra printer and the as400 ? do you use clientaccess emulation printer ? do you define a rmtoutq on your AS400 ? with which *WSCST ?

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