Thanks Al

Yes I did all this for one customer over the phone, some time back, having sent him the instructions via email. It was a bit of a slog. Now, note that all these customers are bus operators, spread over a very large geog area, some quite small, most computer illiterate, each with a different computer set-up, some with a network, some on XP, 95, 98 - some even still on DOS, some wouldn't even attempt the steps.

So we found it the least disruptive and most expediant to do it this way :-)

>>I have to maintain a 2.6 system. In the past it has been printing the results of a run to the printer. Recently many clients have got USB printer connections and the old system, of course, can't recognise one.
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>Actually DOS apps can be made to print to some USB printers. The basic idea:
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>- you need a version of Windows that supports local printer redirection (everything except XP Home and [maybe] low-end Vista versions should work)
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>- you turn on printer sharing, and you make the USB printer shared (e.g. \\MyPC\MyUSBPrinter)
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>- you redirect a DOS printer port to the shared printer e.g.
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>NET USE LPT1: \\MyPC\MyUSBPrinter /persistent:y
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>Now, anything you send to the DOS LPT1: port goes to the USB printer.
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>The reason why I say "some" USB printers is that some are strictly Windows printers (won't support DOS or any other OS) because all page formatting and rendering is done by a Windows print driver. These so-called GDI printers are common because they are very cheap but they have significant limitations.
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>To see if your USB printer can even support DOS printing, go through the steps listed above, then binary-dump a text file to LPT1 (in a CMD window) and see if it prints:
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>COPY SomeTextFile.txt lpt1 /b
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