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Description
Just got a old Epson TM-U325D (with serial interface board UB-S01, connected via an RS232 to USB cable, although there is also the option to upgrade to native USB via the UB-U03II interface board), and learned about this project via python-escpos. Been tinkering with this for a while (it's my first time messing with a proper receipt printer!), and found there is amazingly so little documentation for this ~20 year old printer, even from Epson itself! (and they did sold it for quite some time, it was just not as popular as, say, the TM-U200 series).
Here are some info I've found so far:
- The only documentation about supported ESC/POS commands for this printer only seem to exist on versions 10.03/10.04 of the old Epson APG from circa 2006 (older versions do not list it, newer versions removed it for the TM-U220D). Amazingly, there is a completely unrelated printer that emulates the U325D: the Ithaca POSjet 1500, which also comes with a nice ESC/POS command reference including a few undocumented (albeit irrelevant for those actually printing things) commands!
- This is a impact printer (standard 76mm paper rolls, can use 1 or 2-ply paper) with a slip printing slot. I've tested the slip printer with python-escpos under Linux and it works as expected.
- The only supported image printing mode is via bitImageColumn (ESC *), and only with high density mode disabled (otherwise the printer prints garbage text!)
- No native barcode support whatsoever.
- No automatic cutter - the cut command just feeds the paper to the cut position as expected.
- The Ithaca POSjet 1500 manual mentions a color printing command (ESC r) on its U325D ESC/POS emulation mode, but none of the U325-applicable Epson manuals mention it (and the user manual doesn't even make any reference to the ERC-38BR 2-color ribbon, the only color option for those printers), so I suspect it may be not supported, but then I don't have one of those 2-color ribbons for testing...
- FWIW, it works with CUPS using Epson's own GPL'd raster printer driver for impact printers.
Functionality-wise, this looks like a smaller TM-U200D (for which we also don't have a profile here) with a slip slot.
Would be glad to contribute with testing to prepare a compatible profile for this printer - thermals are nice, but impact dot matrix is basically forever :)