Home Forums Discussions Problems STAR TSP800 printer

I have purchased the printer and have installed it at a workstation. I have tried various drivers from the main star printer site. Only part of the script is being printed and when trying to move the script to the left only "star thermal printer format 1" can be moved to the left. The florida format cannot be moved at all with the "nudge right or left box".
Can someone tell me what the best driver for this printer (tsp800 RX) is and where I can get it.
Another problem is that it does not recognize the black timing marks on the back of the paper. This may be because of the wrong driver also??.

When the Rx prints with the Star TSP 800 thermal roll 1 setting it does not print my DEA number on the scripts.

Raj,

It can be difficult to set up the Star TSP 800. I had an awful time with it. I actually don't use the Maine format. It didn't format as well. I just use the default Format 1. I haven't heard anything from any pharmacy as it has all of the tamper-proof features required.

When using that format, I use 400 twips on left and 650 twips on the right. No negative or positive signs. We also use portrait and not landscape.

The URL below has all of the software and drivers you will need. It also contains PDFs of my settings, which have to be pretty much the same. Once you use one of the small apps in the folder that is online, you can set an IP address for the printer, which will allow you to access it by IP address on your browser. Once your browse to the page, you will need the username and password, which is "root" and "public" without the quotes. But, after all that work getting in, there isn't much you can do but look around a bit.

The setting I use for paper is 104mm x 140mm.

http://tinyurl.com/tsp800

The other important site is http://www.starmicronics.com/rxprinter/t8rxconfig.exe

BUT IT SEEMS TO BE BROKEN. This is for the configuration utility to change the black mark from invalid to valid. I have know idea why it isn't set to valid by default.

Anyway, I think I am going to be able to get the utility tomorrow.

Oh, by the way, if you turn the printer off, then press down the Feeder button on the front recessed part of the printer, then keeping your finger pressed down, turn it back on. It will print out a long sheet of all your settings.
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Even though this is included with the above download, it will be much easier if you simply go to:

http://www.box.net/shared/prqubtblig

and download the config utility. Thanks to Adam, I now know exactly how to set your black mark detector.

Download the Star TSP 700/800 Setup Utility - Advanced Mode
Click on Tickets
Select On from the drop down box to the right of Start Position Detect
Click on the Main tab
Click on Use Settings

You are done. Star Micronics goes out of their way to make this difficult including broken links on their site.

Good luck.

Thanxs for the info. I have received all the files and will try it out tonight. I had the utility already, but when I try to run it some type of installer kept asking me for a acprerequisite.msi file that it could not locate.
I will try it tonight.

Raj

That is sort of strange as it should have nothing to do with AC. AC just happens to print to it, but you can print to it from anything even if AC is not installed.

Bert,

Awsome! Everything works great. Hopefully thir thread will remain here for awhile, since I know others getting this printer would like to get it working properly.
The ACprerequisite thing I cannot figure out. If you cancel the process 2 times it disappears and the configuration utility starts fine.
One other thing: you apparently have yours connected through ethernet. Mine came with USB connection. Your directions worked perfect. The initial window in the config utility asks you first to choose a connection method and I had to chosse the "star printer spooler" choice. Works great and the computer saved my settings back to the printer.

Thanks again.
Raj

I am glad you got it working. If you can ever go to Ethernet, it will be a lot easier to share.

For those of you using the star TSP800 rx printer in Florida,
on version 5, the florida format on amazing charts seems to work with a -400 twips setting. (Florida requires us to write out the month in textual format and the quantity in textual format too, even for printed prescriptions.)

FYI, I submitted this bug to Amazing Charts. Prescription format not persistent. I changed prescription format from TSP version 1 to Florida in version 5.0.26 but it is not being saved for next session.

Ken,

It's madness. Tamper-proof should be tamper-proof. I had the same issue for a bit with AC. My suggestion on that would be in my private PM to you as I don't want to write it here.

We do not have to write out the month, but we do have to write out the text for the amount. Which we would have to do if were writing it out anyway. One problem we had on scripts that we had to write over and over and wanted to be the same would be scripts like:

180 One-hundred eighty. Worked fine until the next time, when it came out 180 One-hundred e. So on scripts where the text was long we started writing the text on the first line or the sig line. This was only for repeat ones. That's the advantage of AC and printing. You don't screw up when writing it. But, this was a great workaround. But, it wouldn't fix your month problems, which I find stupid.

You may wish to invite your state DEA person. Ours is very receptive. Maybe you could sit down and show him/her the issue, and they could make an exception.

Now on to my PM....

I have a question here, now that I found this thread regarding printers. Do any of you guy know how to go about fixing a default printer issue that has been bugging me since AC v5?

We have a laptop on each patient room with AC and each of these laptops have a Star TSP800 printer as well. But there are times when the doctor has to print out an order right there in the patient room and these orders require a standard printer due to the format. When he goes and writes an order, a preview window would usually appear. Of course, since the STAR TSP800 is the default printer, only half the order appears preview window. Back in v4, all the doctor had to do was simply select a different printer in the options and the preview window would automatically refresh with all the order information shown and everything printed normally.

But when v5 came around, this was no longer the case. Whenever the doctor selects a different printer besides the TSP800, the preview window doesn't refresh. And when the doctor goes ahead and prints the order on the standard printer, only half the order is printed. The other half is blank.

So far, the only work around was to go to the printer options in AC, set the intended printer to default, close the preview window, re-write the order, and then print. Seemed simple at first, but the doctor is always busy and has to focus on the patients. Therefore, this work around was inefficient and time consuming.

Also, the doctor noticed when printing multiple prescriptions that only the first Rx has the doctor's name on it, but the rest of the Rx pages print out without his name. How do I deal with this?

I am not sure how you could do that in v4. Maybe I never tried in v4 and only in v3, BUT, in general, having a default printer such as a Dymo or a TSP800 cannot be used as the default. You should make your regular printer your default printer, and then simply choose the TSP800 print driver when printing to that printer. It sounds like your doctors either write a lot of CII scripts or it is simply more convenient for you to do it this way. We write a fair amount of narcotics and ADHD scripts but not enough to justify having a $600 printer in each room. Do you not fax or ePrescribe? Or does your state not allow you to use plain paper scripts?

Anyway, if you set your regular printer as the default and then choose the TSP800 driver when you need it, it will solve your problem. You should get an error message otherwise, and am not sure why you are even able to get the print viewer to show you anything at all. I am testing your issue with a TSP800 and a HP 4200 on WIN7 using v5.026.

As far as the other issue, that should be an easy fix as well. When you click on #2 Prescribe, and then choose either Preview Prescriptions or Print to Default Printer, you will want to change the setting from Print All Scripts/Page to Print One Script/Page. This, of course, will print to the default printer and print one script on each 8 1/2 x 11 paper with the doctor's name at the top. Otherwise, you will be printing two of the scripts intended for tamper-proof paper on one sheet of paper, and you will lose the top 1/3. Ironically, in v4, the default was one script per page and in v5 the default is all scripts per page.

You lost me on that one. Can you be more specific. You went into AC's settings and change printer properties?

Bump

Just to chime in here, I've never had more difficulty setting up a printer as I've had with the Star TSP800Rx. I managed to get it running for a month or so with our old 2003 SBS/XP Pro network, and now that we've migrated to SBS2008/Win7 the printer is a no-go after hours of work. I honestly believe that company purposefully makes their site difficult to navigate and their tech support is hit or miss. It's a shame that such a good device doesn't have the support it needs for users.