The Printer port has often been used for sending messages out to the automation system. Information going to the printer port can be extracted by the EPIS card in a similar way as video information. The new EPIS card can be configured to do that. It can be ordered with just this option only as a supplement to the screen viewer card. Keyboard entry could be provided on either the screen viewer or the printer card. The supplementary card costs much less then a full function card. No software is required on the automation side.
Two physical connections to the automation system would be required to run both cards. Both Xon/Xoff and hardware lines flow control are available on both cards. Transmission speed is 9600,19200,28800 or 57600 bps selectable.
A mixed mode operation when the card sends both printer messages and screen data interleaved is also possible. That would require some simple software to separate the two streams on the emulator side. So far that has not been implemented.