Hi,
I have to help a friend of mine to move
from an old desktop (with win95 and
a legacy program that have to print multiple-copy
chemical forms with condensed ascii cha on an old
dot-matrix 136-columns Brothers printer)
to a new laptop (he doesn't want to buy
an used one). The legacy program works in
any environment from DOS to
winXP - the only issue is that it pretend to access
the printer on LPT1.
Implementing the trick of the usb-to-centronic
adapter and automapping the shared printer as LPT1
worked for simple instraction like

dir > LPT1

but result in error when I tried to access it with
the legacy program (I tested it on my own laptop).

I found out that HP still sells NC6320 with the
parallel port. The pre-sale assistant that I called
from one side confirmed me that the system is
certified even with freedos, but on the other side
could not guarantee me that the printer will be
accessible as LPT1 (even though I think there
will be no issue in that)

my questions are:

1) that system is quite expensive...
and for more than 1100 euros
is shipped only with a shared-memory
intel graphic 950 chipset
is there any cheap alternative

2)
the obsolete legacy program can also print
to file. Could be more easy to write my own
"printer driver" that could detect print-to-file document
and send them to the printer after instructing it to
use condensed ascii chars?

3)
Can a docking station for a parallelport-less
laptop provide LPT1 facility to the old program?

TIA!

bye,
PiErre

PiErre wrote:
Start here: http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/CleanPrinterDrivers.htm

Contact the author for additional questions.

Q

In article <1173374086.063944.6540@64g2000cwx.googlegroups.co m>,
PiErre <siggy2@supereva.it> wrote:

Look for the "docking station" or "port extension" option for your
laptop. Most have one available and the latter can be inexpensive.

Every dockport extender I've seen had a classic parallell port
included.



--
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m
Don't blame me. I voted for Gore. A Proud signature since 2001

PiErre wrote:
There are several issues here.
Older programs used to write hardware registers directly.
If that's the case, you won't be able to use a usb adapter.
If the program has a driver, you might be able to make something
work by messing around in XP compatibility mode.

Even with a real parallel port, XP is not gonna let you write
the ports driectly. There are several workarounds for this.
I like "userportxp". That works around the OS protection,
but still may not fix your problem, depending on the quirks
of the program. VERIFY this works before you drop the
big bux on the laptop.


You can print to file or export into another format that
can be read by a newer program then printed. This works
best if XP thinks it has a driver for your printer.

Just try print to file then copy the file to lpt1.
If that works, there exists a program that monitors
a directory and if anything shows up there, it performs
an operation on it...like print it. But don't remember
where I saw it. Was a long time ago, so may not be compatible
with newer OS.

A docking station designed for your laptop with real
hardware support might work. Beware that universal usb
docking stations have the same problem as your usb adapter.

The printer is not portable. Why a laptop?
Would be cheaper, about 1100 euros cheaper, to put a
desktop on the printer and import the things you want
to print.

mike

--
Return address is VALID!
Bunch-O-Stuff Forsale Here:
http://nm7u.tripod.com/homepage/sale.html

Am 8 Mar 2007 09:14:46 -0800 schrieb PiErre:
This links should list a number of laptops with built-in parallel port,
some of these are used or not on sale anymore, but some might still be
available:
<http://uk.shopping.com/xPP-pc_laptops--%3Eparralel_port%5Eor~S-213~OR-0>
<http://www0.shopping.com/xPP-pc_laptops--%3Eparralel_port%5Eor~S-213~OR-0#stt>

A cheap alternative to the NC6320 could be the FSC Lifebook C1320 or the
newer C14210, or if you manage to find one still available the Lenovo
Thinkpad R51e/R52

It should almost certainly work as a real parallel port - but no 100%
guarantee.

Andreas

PiErre wrote:
The Fujistu E8110 has both serial and parallel ports, but it's quite
expensive.

Check out clearanceclub.com for good prices, but I have no idea if they
are reputable.

The E8110 is also shared memory.

While a USB to parallel adapter is unlikely to work, a PC Card (PCMCIA)
parallel port adapter may work (you have to be sure that the new
notebook has a CardBus slot, as many of the low end notebooks have
dropped the CardBus slot).

See "http://www.transdigital.net/info.htm"
If the card supports DOS programs and the legacy addresses it will
explicitly state this. But also look at
"http://www.quatech.com/support/parallelpcmcia_faq.php" number 19. This
implies that on newer laptops that there is no support for DOS.

If the programs works in a DOS window under XP then it should be able to
use the PCMCIA card parallel port.

mike,

http://www.printfil.com - yes, it's compatible even with Vista. We've
released a new version even this week.

With Printfil you can automatically capture the file created by the legacy
application and send it to any installed Windows printer either in RAW mode
or by converting it in a GDI print job.

By using RAW mode you could forward the file to the LPT dot-matrix printer
connected through an USB-to-LPT cable (printer+cable must work ok in Windows
however)

By printing in GDI mode you could also send the same job to any other
printer (including inkjet laser and virtual printers). In this case, instead
of printing to the chemical paper you can merge a standard Windows BMP file
as background and tell Printfil to print multiple copies of the same
document to simple white paper (or a PDF document, a "fax" printer etc.).

More info and a free trial version is available for download at
http://www.printfil.com

Regards,
Davide Guolo
aSwIt s.r.l.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Printfil - Windows Printing System for Applications
http://www.printfil.com
Odbc4All - Connection to ODBC Data Sources for any Application
http://www.aswit.com/odbc4all
@Kill - Batch Close Windows Applications - Freeware
http://www.aswit.com/akill
--------------------------------------------------------------

This NG really rocks!
Many thanks to all!

bye,
PiErre