FDP2000

Remedy IT Solutions has developed a set of device drivers for Shinko Seisakusho Co. for its new Financial Document Printer, the S4670 e-Printer.

The e-Printer is a new multifunction device for the banking industry that offers printing capabilities for financial documents such as passbooks, slips, etc. It can also read the magnetic strips in passbooks. In addition, the device can be equipped with a scanner module for scanning financial documents and an optional 1.x-compliant USB interface (necessary for the scanner module) in addition to the standard serial interface (RS-232C).

Remedy IT was asked to provide suitable drivers for the entire range of Win32 compatible PC platforms (i.e. Windows 95, 98, NT4, 2000 etc.) with support for the Windows printer architecture, magnetic strip reader and TWAIN-compatible scanner functionality.

The ability to customise the e-Printer means that the driver software requires a high degree of flexibility in order to be able to handle the various device configurations in a transparent manner.

Moreover, since all the functions of the e-Printer are integrated into a single physical peripheral device, but are (generally) accessed from more than one process on the PC, reliable synchronisation mechanisms are needed to prevent processes from interfering with one another.

The driver software supplied by Remedy IT implements a layered standard communication architecture for all software components with a plug-in structure to support various physical communication interfaces. In addition, the communication layer offers synchronisation functions for controlling communication flow from different functional components of the software.

The various software components are implemented as separate configurable components to allow for maximum flexibility in the composition and operation of the drivers.