POS - Using Pole Display

[Mike Schwartz]

Has anyone written a filePro based POS app and successfully used a Pole
Display?  If so, would you mind sharing the how and/or recommended brand?
 
Thanks!
 
Jose Lerebours
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     I wrote a filePro based POS cash register system that included a pole
display several years ago.  (The customer quit using it ever 10 years
ago...)  
 
     The pole display was driven by a serial cable that was attached to the
spare serial port on the back of the dumb terminal on a SCO Xenix computer.
It was a 2-line x 40 character pole display, similar to this one
(programming manual shown):

http://www.utcretail.com/media/IOM/PD1200PoleDisplayProgrammingGuide.1139310
4G.pdf

    As I recall, it wasn’t too difficult to get the pole display and cash
drawer working.  The cash drawer and the pole display and the mini-receipt
printer were daisy chained together off of the serial "printer" port on the
back of the dumb terminal.  When I sent some combination of characters (I
think Ctrl-D then CTRL-G), the cash drawer opened and rang the bell.  I had
to turn transparent printing on, then send the data out the serial port,
then turn transparent print back off.  When I tested this stuff without the
transparent printing signals, the data going to the display and printer
would mess up the display on the ascii terminal.

     If you are doing this on a Windows computer, it should be pretty easy
to attach a cash drawer and a pole display to the serial ports on the back
of the computer, and then have filePro send the proper characters out the
serial ports using the OUTS command in filePro.

     I know there are larger pole displays available now that will handle
24x80 characters.  Many are color and some can be driven with other
languages, rather than directly sending ascii characters.  
    
Hope that helps!

Mike Schwartz