Scott Hanselman

Getting a Shared Network Printer to work under DOS

March 11, 2005 Comment on this post [1] Posted in Musings
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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...

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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March 12, 2005 3:18
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

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.