Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - Getting a Shared Network Printer to work under DOS

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Getting a Shared Network Printer to work under DOS

Posted 2005-03-11 09:20 AM in Musings.

I get some crazy questions emailed to me, presumably because of the blog. Most I can't answer, as I have a job and a wife, but some are too interesting not to. One fellow emailed me yesterday who's got a real world legacy system problem. So, since everyone is so concerned about VB6 support going away, I give you:

Getting a Shared Network Printer to work under DOS - A CheckList

DOS Hardware Drivers for your network card
DOS TCP/IP stack
Network stack for whatever protocol is sharing your printer (SAMBA, Novell, etc)
Printer Port Redirector for DOS that will let you point LPT1(PRN) to your networked printer

Googling found these, I'm sure there are more:

Seems that if people care deeply about legacy systems, they will make things work. Now I'm off to get email from my C64...

Tracked by:
"Print to USB Printer from DOS " (Totzkeeeeee's Blog) [Trackback]
"HOWTO: Print to a USB Printer from DOS in Windows XP" (Totzkeeeeee's Blog) [Trackback]
"HOWTO: Print to a USB Printer from DOS in Windows XP" (Totzkeeeeee's Blog) [Trackback]

Friday, March 11, 2005 3:18:36 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

If it's running in DOS on Windows you can simply do:
NET USE LPT1: \\machine_name\PrinterShareName /PERSISTENT:YES

Heck that might even work in real DOS. I don't remember.

For some real fun, try to use a USB printer from a DOS application. I share my tale of woe over on my blog:
http://blogs.ineta.org/dtotzke/archive/2005/03/11/26099.aspx

Cheers