OT : Need a source to get printer control codes

Discussion in 'UK Motorcycles' started by Kalico, May 25, 2004.

  1. Kalico

    andrewr Guest

    I was thinking along the same lines, but if it's a 3rd party app then it might
    only print to LPT1 or LPT2 and, off the top of my head, I can't think of a way
    to map those ports to a file in DOS.

    You could work something out with a parallel lap-link cable, no doubt, but it
    would take some messing about at the other end.

    --
    AndrewR, D.Bot (Celeritas)
    Kawasaki ZX-6R J1
    BOTAFOT#2,ITJWTFO#6,UKRMRM#1/13a,MCT#1,DFV#2,SKoGA#0 (and KotL)
    BotToS#5,SBS#25,IbW#34, TEAR#3 (and KotL), DS#5, Keeper of the TFSTR#
    The speccy Geordie twat.
     
    andrewr, May 26, 2004
    #21
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  2. Kalico

    prawn Guest

    It's tricky. I pure DOS envirnments, you capture the interrupt for
    the port and redirect, though there are probably utilities around to
    do this.

    Best to do R&D on a Win box with the correct drivers and set the port
    for the printer to be a file.

    I have had to write my own print handling routines in the past and
    they can be a right royal PITA.
     
    prawn, May 26, 2004
    #22
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  3. Kalico

    darsy Guest

    you definitely used to be able to get utils that would capture any of
    the standard ports (LPT1, LPT2 and CON) and remap them somewhere else
    - I /think/ this utility was part of Netware 2.2, but I'm sure a bit
    of poking around would dig something up.

    Alternatively, as you say, capture the printer output on another
    machine using a laplink cable - pretty easily actually. I mean, this
    is from >10 year old memory but can't you just pipe the input from
    LPT1 to a text file directly from the DOS shell?
     
    darsy, May 26, 2004
    #23
  4. Kalico

    andrewr Guest

    Ask Google and Google shall provide.

    Not that I'm actually going to bother Googling, because I can't remember the
    last time I printed something from a DOS shell.

    Even when I was doing a little bit of coding in QBASIC a couple of years ago
    and wanted a print-out of the code I just opened up the .BAS file into wordpad
    and printed it.
    No, it's not that straightforward.

    You have to configure the client machine to listen to the LPT port.

    My only experience of doing this was as part of the remote install for Lap-Link
    3, which was some time after the dinosaurs became extinct, but before fire was
    popular.

    --
    AndrewR, D.Bot (Celeritas)
    Kawasaki ZX-6R J1
    BOTAFOT#2,ITJWTFO#6,UKRMRM#1/13a,MCT#1,DFV#2,SKoGA#0 (and KotL)
    BotToS#5,SBS#25,IbW#34, TEAR#3 (and KotL), DS#5, Keeper of the TFSTR#
    The speccy Geordie twat.
     
    andrewr, May 26, 2004
    #24
  5. Kalico

    Kalico Guest

    [snip]

    Thanks to all who've given advice.

    The printer is an ML-1210 and will not,according to Samsung, print any
    DOS stuff at all. In fact, they were quite suprised when I told them
    how I have managed to solve it, since it is one of those printers
    (Winprinter) that must have the complete page supplied to it by the
    driver, probably as a bitmap or something proprietry.

    I've actually managed to get sorted with acombination of a program
    called DOSprinter (not DOSprint, which although good did not quite
    solve it) and a neat registry edit.

    The DOSprinter program emulates Epson codes and the registry edit has
    allowed a type of capture of the port.

    So, the DOS app prints to LPT2 which gets captured to a non-existant
    Epson printer which is set up as a network queue. This then dumps the
    output to a file The DOSprinter app then sees that this file has
    changed and takes a peek at the Epson ESC codes in the file (that I
    manaully configured the DOS app to send out) and does a pretty fair
    rendition to the Laser winprinter. Sorted Perry.

    Anyway, I have a solution of sorts, so thanks to you all for pointing
    me in the right direction.

    Rob
     
    Kalico, May 26, 2004
    #25
  6. Kalico

    Nigel Eaton Guest

    Using the patented Mavis Beacon "Hunt&Peck" Technique, Kalico
    ****. Me.

    <scuttles off to investigate>
     
    Nigel Eaton, May 26, 2004
    #26
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