Need help with ALPS DMX800!

[xHybridx]

Alright, so I bought an ALPS DMX800 off Ebay a few months back and have had SEVERAL problems with it. The guy who sold it to me didn't include the driver or a inference cord for it, so I had to track down the driver online and buy my own cord. For the cord I bought a 9-pin to 25-pin that plugs into the first printer port on the back of my PC and the parallel port on my ALPS. The driver I used is called "FX 1050" which I was recommended to use on an ALPS site. I installed the driver after having to go through several loop holes where it claimed a few .dll files were missing, so I had to go online and track down the files and then load them into the driver. After finally getting the driver installed I went to the settings of the printer on my computer and made sure it was going to print from COM1 (My first computer port), and I made sure to configure my ALPS printer so it was set to print on the parallel inference. I tried printing a simple document in Wordpad and absolutely nothing happened on my ALPS printer, after a while the printing process failed. I've tried using a serial cord instead, and the same issue took place. And if these two problems weren't enough, the printer itself is the most confusing piece of **** I've ever came in contact with, the options are complicated and don't make much sense. I would have simply returned this to the seller after finding out it didn't come with the needed accessories, but I would have only gotten refunded $20 of the $60 I payed, as $40 was used for shipping it.

The only possible solution I have for it not printing with the driver that I've installed is that maybe it's not compatible for Windows XP, as it mentioned in the information for the FX 1050 driver that it was for "ME, Windows 98, and Windows 95". Well I can't seem to find any other related drivers that are specifically for XP, so I'm pretty lost here...I've went through way too much trouble as it is.

On the ALPS site that recommended the FX 1050 driver, it also recommended using the IBM Proprinter III XL driver. I downloaded the setup for it but can't get it to properly install.

Here are my specs if they will help at all:

Machine name: HOME-82F931CB5D
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.080814-1233)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: GBT___
System Model: AWRDACPI
BIOS: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) , MMX, 3DNow, ~1.1GHz
Memory: 1024MB RAM
Page File: 670MB used, 1792MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.2180 32bit Unicode

Any help would be great.

[cs_steve]

A couple of suggestions:

-- You should hook the printer up via a standard parallel cable -- this would use the LPT1 port rather than the COM1 port (serial connection).

-- It looks like this model is the same as the Epson FX 1050 (hence the name of your driver). You might go to Epson.com and see if they still have a Driver download for their FX 1050 model, which should be compatiblle.

[xHybridx]

Thanks for the help.

I went to the page for the FX 1050 driver on the Epson site and it was the same one that I had already gotten. It says it's compatible with Windows 98, Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0, and Windows NT 3.51 which sucks.

I tried plugging it in with a serial cord and my printer didn't do anything which is weird, I made sure to switch the inference to serial on the printer itself too.