Paul Williams wrote in a message to All:

 PW> Hi All , hope you are having a nice day

Not too bad...    :-)

 PW>  I've got a barcode scanner that I picked up sometime back and 
 PW> what w/ trying to move in the future it would be nice to have it 
 PW> working so I could slap some labels on the boxes w/ the inventory 
 PW> on the laptop. (i also have a nice thermal label printer made for 
 PW> ups labels if i can get a 16vac 4amp wallwart and maybe a driver 
 PW> for '98 to go w/ it. eltron lp2442psa, rev. g)

Too bad you didn't snag one of those ones that radio shack was giving away
some time back...   I have some info on those,  and I understand that
there's support under linux,  as well.



 PW>  I've had it open and there's a MAX232 chip so I know it's a serial
 PW> interface, but there's a jumper for something in there and I 
 PW> haven't the slightest idea if it's wired as DTE or DCE nor what the
 PW> proper comm settings are for it.

One of the handier gadgets I've picked up over the years is one of those
little gizmos that has a male-female pair of DB25 connectors on it and a
set of LEDs (five? seven? I forget...)  I can't recall where I got it, 
some mail-order outfit,  but last time I looked radio shack was selling
those,  too.  It appears to be the identical unit.  In fact,  it's in the
handy catalog here for $14.99 as 276-1401.  Only about double what I paid
for mine.  

Lacking that,  you can probe the pins with a bidirectional LED/resistor
combo, the other end of things grounded.  Or a pair of back-to-back LEDs, 
only one resistor needed.  No light means that you're either looking at a
pin that's not connected or an input,  a light tells you that you're
looking at an output,  and those signals on which pins will tell you how
the port is wired.

My usual thing with the gizmo was plug it in,  see which lights came on, 
then plug it in to the other half of the hookup and see if the _other_
lights came on,  which was a good sign.  If the same ones came on both
sides,  that was usually a pretty good indication that some crossover
wiring was needed.

 PW> I've tried using my comm program and some other stuff to try and 
 PW> talk to it but I've not had any luck so far.

Gotta get the bottom-level hardware stuff right first,  doncha think?

---