Printing CMC7 on IBM Infoprint 1532

[Former Member]

Hello,

We are setting up ECC 6.0 on iSeries V5R4 and have a problem

Now, we have iSeries applications which print MICR CMC7 characters on an Infoprint 1532 printer without problems. It is configured as IPDS/AFP

From SAP we are unable to print CMC7 characters, we have tried following oss 133.660, using the printer as it is defined for iSeries app. (IPDS/AFP) and, in SAP, device type IBMNP without success. We have defined it as a non IPDS emulated printer (emulating 3812, host print transform, *INFOPRINT1500) and, in SAP, device type HP5MI, HPLJMI, SAPSCS, ..., without success

We opened a SAP message and were told to use device type SAPGOF and buy a converter to transform to IPDS. We have been told that the sw is Infoprint Manager with SAP peature. Its price is quite high

We think that if we can print CMC7 from iSeries without problems, we should be able to print CMC7 from SAP

We think many customers must be printing CMC7 or, at least MICR characters from SAP on iSeries, it must not be too difficult nor expensive, but can't find how to do and now we are quite hurry

Is it possible to print CMC7 on an Infoprint 1532 without any other sw? If not which printer or kind of printer should we use?

How should we define the printer on the iSeries and on SAP?

Any oss note we should follow?

Thanks in advance, Ximo Escobedo

[Former Member]

Hi Ximo

My name is Frank and I have exact same problem as you were having.

We have SAP ECC 6.0 running in System i V5R4 too and we cannot print barcodes from SAP to IBM infoprint printers (1500series).

Did you ever get your problem resolved, if so could you tell me how you did it?

Thanks a lot !

[christian_bartels]

Hi Ximo,

maybe IBM Technical Document 22214546 can be helpful (link: http://www-912.ibm.com/s_dir/slkbase.NSF/acf2ee1e9d64b16e8625680b00020389/9796c0afc3ed166b862569e700....

In general, SAP does not support IPDS or AFP printing on i5/OS. You can configure the printer in SAP as IBMSCS, but then you have only very limited formatting options. That's why I would suggest trying to use the printer with an ASCII data stream (like PCL6). I don't know if your printer supports that data stream by default, if you have to change settings on the printer, or if extra features need to be installed. What happened when you configured your printer in SAP with device type IBMNP? Did it print something (like simple lists), but no MICR? Or did it print nothing useful at all?

Kind regards,

Christian Bartels.

[Former Member]

Hi Christian, Merry Christmas

I've read the technical document and it explains very well print from iSeries, but I think that information can't be used when printing from SAP: we can't use DDS, we can't use IPDS printing and I think we can't use fonts from operating system

If we define the printer in i5/OS as IPDS and AFP=YES (it can't be defined as IPDS and AFP=NO), then the spool file is retained in the OUTQ of the i5. No matter how we define it in SAP (IBMNP, HP5MI, ...)

If we define the printer in i5/OS as 3812, host print transform, and printer type=*infoprint1500, then it prints, but doesn't use CMC7 font. To tell the printer to use CMC7 font, Abap programmer has used oss 133.660 and oss 94.233

Kind regards and Merry Christmas, Ximo Escobedo

[Former Member]

Hi Ximo,

as mentioned earlier:

It is NOT helpful, to use AFPDS printers with SAP, because the setup is very complicated and the tools are pretty expensive as you detected already. As you do not want to purchase them, you can only use solutions, that rely on SAP standard technology. One of them wouild be to buy these fonts in cartridges for special HP printers. As you are using IBM Infoprinters, I would recommend the idea, that I suggested with the special fonts. This is more a type of consulting and then it "just works" ...

Regards

Volker Gueldenpfennig, consolut international ag

http://www.consolut.de - http://www.4soi.de - http://www.easymarketplace.de

[Former Member]

Hi Ximo,

first of all, you are from IBM => you should be happy, when IBM sells software to customers ))

What type of characters to you want to print ? Barcodes ? Or what ?

IPDS is not really good supported ... When I know what you are looking for, I'm pretty sure, to be able to provide you with a costly far less expensive solution.

Regards

Volker Gueldenpfennig, consolut international ag

http://www.consolut.de - http://www.4soi.de - http://www.easymarketplace.de

[Former Member]

Hi Volker, how are you? do you remember me? You certified me in SAP CPC to ASCII

Well, you are right, I work for IBM, but I don't like to use an expensive solution if there is a cheap one (don't worry, I know you did a joke). In any case, the customer has asked the SW to IBM in test mode. Perhaps the SW makes many things the customer likes and he buys it. IBM, the customer and myself would be glad and we would have our problem solved

We want to print MICR (magnetic) characters with font CMC7. Untill now, they have been printing checks (cheques?) from iSeries applications with DDS through the Infoprint 1532 with the MICR module, and works really fine

All of us thought that if i5/OS was able to print so, SAP on iSeries would be able too, but we can't find how to print CMC7 with same printer

We have 2 DEVD in i5/OS: the IPDS/AFP one and another one emulating a 3812 with host print transform and *infoprint1500, as I said when I posted original question

Is it possible to print MICR CMC7 with Infoprint 1532 with MICR simm? How? If not, what would you recommed us?

[Former Member]

Hi Ximo,

we do have done this several times for customers. You just need an HP compatible printer and need special TrueType Fonts and a bit know how.

Then it prints really good directly from the SAP system to your printer without any needs of conversion tools, print suites etc ...

Just let us know, then we can help you with this.

Regards

Volker Gueldenpfennig, consolut international ag

http://www.consolut.de - http://www.4soi.de - http://www.easymarketplace.de