Announcement

**Peter Lameijn** · 10 Jun 2007, 10:13 AM

Using "NET USE LPT1: \\MYCOMPUTER\MYPRINTER /PERSISTANT:YES" should do.
M$ confirms that some (epson)printers have compatibility issues with DOS programs.
If you map a windows printer to a DOS recognized port (LPTx: ), it should work.

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Regards,
Peter

[This message has been edited by Peter Lameijn (edited June 10, 2007).]

**Paul D. Elliott** · 10 Jun 2007, 12:38 PM

Peter,

May I ask which OS and printer model? Cause I've not been able to
get that to work with windows-only printers ( the ones that do
not understand any of the old esc-codes and need to be installed
in Windows to work ). and judging from the non-responses from
others here, no one else has.

that does work for the older DOS-compatible printers. I've used
it to connect to lots of dot-matrix printers and quite a few
of the laserjets ( but not the cheap inkjets & lasers that are
around today ).

I'm not picking on you. I just want to know.

Okay?

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**Tom Tallardy** · 10 Jun 2007, 05:17 PM

Paul -

every Epson ink jet I've had, running W95 thru XP, has performed exactly as per DOS 6.x when connected to LPT1:
some Canon ink jets functioned identically.

and that includes utilities I myself wrote starting in IBMBasic, rolled over into QB and later rolled into PBDOS - with explicit <Esc> sequences to control margins, lines per page, perf skip, fonts, etc.

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**Mike Stefanik** · 10 Jun 2007, 06:13 PM

What he's referring to are commonly called "Winprinters" or "GDI Printers", and are typically low-end inkjet printers which don't have a built-in language like PCL (or like some of the cheap Lexmark printers, use a proprietary, undocumented interface). Instead, they depend on the operating system to do all of the heavy lifting, rendering the text to a bitmap and then sending it to the printer at a fixed rate. Those printers don't understand things like control sequences because they literally have no "brains" to do them. All they know how to do is print bitmap images.

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Mike Stefanik
www.catalyst.com
Catalyst Development Corporation

**Paul D. Elliott** · 10 Jun 2007, 06:21 PM

Tom,

The point is we were only talking about windows-only printers.
The kind that can NOT be used in a pure DOS environment.
Running DOS under Windows is not a pure DOS environment.
Windows-only printers do NOT understand the traditional
esc-codes. They only operate when driven by a Windows driver.

Peter said that he knows a way to allow DOS programs to print
to those printers when run in a DOS-window.
I keep asking for details as nothing I've been able to do will
allow this.

Yes, I've been printing to the old-style DOS capable printers
from within Windows for around 10 years and still do today.
From old DOS QBasic-interpretted programs & QB compiled programs
and even a bunch of DOS-based COBOL programs.

How much clearer can I make myself and the question?

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**Peter Lameijn** · 10 Jun 2007, 07:40 PM

Paul,

Last times I used it was with a Networked HP Laser and an USB connected OffeceJet V45. I don't have them
here, so I cannot test it... (Using W2K)

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Regards,
Peter

**Mike Stefanik** · 10 Jun 2007, 10:43 PM

If they were LaserJet printers that use PCL, then that's not a GDI printer. What's being discussed are along the lines of the Lexmark WinWriters. In most cases, you're talking cheap inkjets, not laser printers.

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Mike Stefanik
www.catalyst.com
Catalyst Development Corporation

**Chris Holbrook** · 11 Jun 2007, 03:14 AM

Originally posted by Mike Stefanik:
If they were LaserJet printers that use PCL, then that's not a GDI printer.

I suspect that any printer addressed via a windows printer driver other than Generic/Text is a GDI printer, whether or not is has PCL or Epson/IBM emulation or whatever. For example, an application which I look after uses a dot matrix printer. User purchased a new printer and installed it as per the manual and the application didn't print any more. Once a Generic/Text driver was set up for the printer and it was mapped to LPT1, everything worked as before.

[This message has been edited by Chris Holbrook (edited June 11, 2007).]

**Gary Stout** · 11 Jun 2007, 04:16 AM

Paul,

Are you aware of the DosPrint utility that Lance Edmonds has available
to do this? I think you can download a demo to test at www.dosprint.com
I think this will do what you are asking.

HTH,
Gary

**Jim Padgett** · 11 Jun 2007, 04:40 AM

What we do at work is this:

Add a Generic Text Only printer and assign it to LPT1: ( we don't actually
have a printer on this port and for what we are doing here it's better that
we don't ).

Then we add a printer with TCP/IP printing * We create a IP port to print to.
This will work as long as you know the port your actual printer prints to.
(my HP Office Jet prints to USB02 as a port)

Go in to the settings for the Generic Text Only printer and enable printer pooling
and assign the port for your actual printer as a pooled port.

When you print to LPT1: since you don't have a printer actually on LPT1: the spooler
will send the job to the next or pooled port which is you actual printer.

------------------
Warped by the rain, Driven by the snow...

padgettjatcomcastdotnet

**Paul D. Elliott** · 11 Jun 2007, 08:55 AM

Peter,

Both of those sound like they are DOS-compatible printers. Not
the winprinter/GDI printers being discussed. so unless you have
a winprinter/GDI printer to test with, I don't see it working.

Gary,

Yes, I've actually got his products & use them occasionally.
But it's not the point of this thread.

Jim,

That might work. I tried a simple test. added a generic/textonly
printer on lpt1 & pooled it. also pooled a LJ 1018 on a USB port.
went to DOS & ran a quick qb program to print 25 lines to lpt1.
it didn't pool the print to the first available printer ( the lj).
it just keeps coming up & saying an error writing to lpt1.
maybe I need to reboot first. I'll check on this later.

----------

This thread was just to get more detail info from Peter about
how he was able to print to a winprinter from DOS without using
any additional Windows programs. He had mentioned in the other
thread that it was possible but I couldn't make it work. I was
really just curious as to how he got it to work. For me, it
doesn't. I'll go back to work now.

Thanks.

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**Georg Potthast** · 11 Jun 2007, 03:09 PM

I use the command "NET USE LPT1: \\MYCOMPUTER\MYPRINTER" on my Win2000 PC to print to Minolta printer on the LAN.

Usually I use EDIT to print text files.

As the release name I used a name 8 bytes long, do not know if that makes any difference.

Regards

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**Jim Padgett** · 11 Jun 2007, 07:25 PM

You should be able to test it by opening a command prompt and do a:
print text.txt statement ( text.txt being a text file on your PC )

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Warped by the rain, Driven by the snow...

padgettjatcomcastdotnet

**Georg Potthast** · 12 Jun 2007, 01:09 AM

When I enter "print test.txt" it prints my file test.txt

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**Jim Padgett** · 12 Jun 2007, 03:01 AM

At this point I can't see why there would be a difference from printing
within PB.. perhaps tech support could shed some light.

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Warped by the rain, Driven by the snow...

padgettjatcomcastdotnet

**Mike Doty** · 12 Jun 2007, 07:12 AM

If the printer doesn't have electronics in it (like older HP LaserJets do have) a printer driver is required.
DDOC, DOSPRINT or XPRINT can read the a file and print it.
I would not USE NET USE LPT1 since that may conflict with printer drivers.

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[This message has been edited by Mike Doty (edited June 12, 2007).]

**Leonard Belcher** · 19 Jun 2007, 07:36 PM

Try this from a command line type edit. In the edit..or
type something. then print what you typed. If it prints
you can get PowerBasic to print also. Check the LPT number
in edit and attach the printer in powerbasic.

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Leonard Belcher
"Life begins at 140"
Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10

**Hubert Brandel** · 27 Jun 2007, 10:03 AM

Hi,

some GDI driver do emulate a PCL or ESC/P or IBM Proprinter.
If yours do, than you can print, but do not hope on help by
the printer support.

I have a PCL/6 color laser and tried to set the printer to
PC8 font permanently, because I need this for direct 'dos'
printing. The panel do allow this, but the printer still print
in Roman 8. So I wrote to support about this error ...

'we will not support DOS printing anymore, so no help, no info'

What I want to say is, forget DOS printing, forget DOS go to
XPRINT in PowerBasic 8.03 ...

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Announcement

DOS printing to Windows-only printers

DOS printing to Windows-only printers

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