On most HP BASIC workstations a printer is hooked to the IEEE-488 interface and is set to primary address 1. Thus, the device selector is 701. This convention is followed so closely that a special function, PRT, was created with the value 701. Many programs use this fact to switch output to the printer with the statement.
PRINTER IS PRT
Under Windows, printers are accessed through the printer driver, which is accessed in HTBasic through device selector 10. Many existing programs use PRT as the device selector for the printer. So that these programs continue to work, PRT has been changed to 10. If you are using an IEEE-488 printer with ISC 1, you may wish that PRT had the value 701 as it did under HP BASIC. To allow you to change PRT, the CONFIGURE PRT statement has been added. CONFIGURE PRT need only be used if you are porting existing programs that reference PRT and you do not wish to use the Windows printer driver.
CONFIGURE PRT specifies the device-selector that the PRT function returns. If you are using an IEEE-488 bus printer at address one, you will probably want to change PRT back to 701 to match the HP BASIC definition of PRT:
