The 5890 printer does not support barcodes

I haven’t been able to print barcodes on the 5890 model thermal receipt printer, and it looks like other developers can’t either.

The same printer is sold under a few names. As far as I can tell (mainly from bug reports to escpos-php), these are all the same printer, and could have this issue:

• AGPtEK SC35-5890F
• EC Line 5890
• Gainscha GP-5890
• HSPOS HS-589C
• POS-5890
• WinBond 5890
• Zjiang ZJ-5890 or POS-5890

In my case, I have a Zjiang POS-5890C, which list the barcode command GS k in its documentation, but does not actually respond to the command.

Separately, a developer has contacted their vendor and confirmed that this is an error in the documentation.

A few bookmarks for reference:

• https://github.com/python-escpos/python-escpos/issues/58
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42124722/esc-pos-not-printing-barcodes

How to test for barcode support in USB printers

Get yourself a Linux computer or VM, set up the printer with usblp, and run this command:

echo -e '\x1d\x6b\x04000\x00' > /dev/usb/lp0

This command prints a CODE39 barcode containing ‘000’ on printers which support barcodes, and prints garbage on printers which do not.

See also:

• Getting a USB receipt printer working on Linux
• ZXing (“Zebra Crossing”) – Open source Android app for scanning barcodes
• How to send ESC/POS commands to thermal printer in Linux – Related StackOverflow answer of mine