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:

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:

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