[Gllug] EPOS systems

[Jon Dye]

David Irvine wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-07-26 at 12:57, Liam Delahunty wrote:
> 
>>Chap upstairs wants to bar code all his stock and run a EPOS system.
[snip]
>>Anyone had to implement one and have any recommendations.
> 
> I've not used any off-the-shelf software for this as yet, mainly for the
> reasons mentioned above, and also because of existing systems which need
> to be integrated, hence i've generally written my own, bar code
> scanners, are fairly simple, they just present themselves either as a
> usb keyboard, or have a t-piece for ps/2.

There are also serial barcode readers which we use quite a lot where I 
work and they all have documentation on the protocols used.  I can't 
remember the make off the top of my head though.

 > Barcode/thermal printers are
> a bit more tricky, there are some which are supported, however, i've
> generally had medium->bad results with these, mainly due to the lack of
> time spent playing with them.
 >
> You  can get serial driven receipt printers which work fairly well, both
> citizen and epsom do them, although they are not that cheap.

We use label printers made by Zebra (formally Eltron) which have a well 
defined protocol (ELP2 I think it's called) and can print a barcode with 
about 40 characters of ASCII sent to the printer.  There are ones with 
serial, parallel and usb interfaces (some have multiple interfaces) and 
there are thermal and ribbon versions.

JD
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